


Cybernetic

by Doodled93



Series: CYBER [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: AU--canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Cyber Wingman of Love, Cybermen - Freeform, Cybernetic, Fluff, Ianto has feels, Ianto!centric, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Original Aliens - Freeform, Prosthetics, The Coffee Machine, Trauma, cyber, cyber!Ianto, jack/ianto - Freeform, janto, loss of limb, sentient limbs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-19 03:26:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doodled93/pseuds/Doodled93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daleks vaporized his arm.<br/>Cybermen gave him a new one.<br/>Somehow, Ianto Jones survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lisa

Ianto held himself stiffly the first time he met Jack Harkness. He tried to look relaxed, tried to look confident—didn’t quite manage the first.

He casually mentioned weevils, casually tried to bring up that hey, he knew things, wouldn’t Jack like him to join his branch of Torchwood?

Jack immediately shuts down.

Ianto’s gloved hand clenches of its own volition. His shoulder aches.

Ianto thought it would have been useful to know that Jack Harkness despised any and all things to do with Torchwood One _earlier_.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

The next time wasn’t much better, and the time after that…

Well.

He catches a break when he finds a Pteranodon in Cardiff—and wasn’t _that_ one way to bring back some of the wonder of the universe? Give a man Cybermen and it turns into a nightmare, but give a man a dinosaur and he’s revisiting his 11-year-old mindset—and feels his arm shift when Jack threatens to run him over. Clenches his other hand down over it in warning.

The interest in Jack’s eyes when Ianto mentions a Pteranodon is a relief.

His arm goes slack under his grip.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He thinks for the first time that his… affliction has some uses when the Pteranodon scrapes claws over his arm as it wings past. Thinks that otherwise those claws would’ve made it to bone. Instead, it only ruins his sleeve.

Bugger.

As it is, while Harkness is distracted with the Pteranodon, he has to do a quick check that nothing is showing through the tear in fabric, to pull his handkerchief free from his pocket and tie it just under the tear…

Tie it to hide the shine of metal underneath.

When they end up rolling against each other in an effort to keep from getting crushed, Ianto has no room in his head to notice the warm press of Harkness against himself, let alone room enough to enjoy it.

Instead there’s a blind panic hidden in the backs of his eyelids, a mantra of _please don’t notice please don’t notice, oh gods he must feel it, please don’t—_

His heart was pounding when he finally managed to push away from the contact, and doesn’t slow even after he’s managed to convince Harkness to take him on…

It rankles some that he’ll be on as a glorified Tea Boy, that he’ll likely be kept from what he’s been doing the past two years—what he’s been _trained_ to do—by whoever’s looking after Three’s Archives, but he wasn’t actually all that interested in rejoining Torchwood.

If he were really interested, he would have approached Harkness the one time and then moved onto UNIT afterwards…

Even if he doesn’t like the militaristic gob shites it would have been better than knowing and not being able to do anything about it.

But his main interest right then was Lisa.

Lisa, and then his arm.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto would like to say that he took his whole _situation_ in stride from the get go, that he saw the problem and learned to deal with it… but he couldn’t well say that when the first thing he tried to do coming out of Canary Warf was saw his arm off.

Tried, and _failed_.

_Horribly._

His shoulder had already been aching, and there were a dozen other aches and pains he’d been dealing with not even counting the ones he got pulling Lisa to safety, but _Cybermen_ , and _how could they do that_ , and _just get it off_ had been running though his mind. He looked down at his gloved hand now, hearing the creak of leather as fingers flexed, and thought longingly for a prosthetic limb.

A useless one. One with interchangeable hands. One that he could take off and put on at will, one that he wouldn’t constantly worry about, one that would allow him to look at the stump of his shoulder and see that his arm is gone. See and believe and stop being able to forget about it—because he shouldn’t be able to forget like this.

Ianto had been ambidextrous before, more dominant on his right side, and now he mainly used his left hand—

Unless he forgot.

When he forgot, it was like he was normal when he wasn’t; it was like he didn’t have Lisa to look after, like he didn’t have to worry about Jack Harkness finding out about his plans to bring Dr. Tanizaki into their secret base, like he wasn’t in a constant state of _worryworryworryfretfretfret_ every hour of every day.

Because he was the Head Archivist—the _only_ Archivist, and wasn’t that a joke—and he knew the bowels of Torchwood Three better than anyone, save Harkness perhaps, so Ianto could do this. Ianto could bring Tanizaki in, could have him look at Lisa and perhaps _help_ …

He smoothed his expression and brought out coffee, empty smile and empty banter and air of polite disinterest a shroud around him, his armor.

His armor, polished to a eye-averting shine in his suits

(His suits that a vain part of him was glad fit normally, was glad to not have a gaping sleeve, and he was working on squishing that part out of him because _he wasn’t_ —)

and kept strong with the knowledge that if it wasn’t he would be letting Lisa down.

He needed to focus on Lisa, he reminded himself, cleaning up after the slobs of Torchwood Three, needed to focus on her because she had it so much worse.

She had it so much worse than simply having a Cybernetic arm.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto doesn’t have it in him to be surprised when his attempt to actually saw his arm off is met with… resistance.

He only sighs and thinks, _that’s twenty quid down the drain_ , and starts to collect the pieces of torn-up, crumpled metal for disposal.

It was worth a shot, anyway.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto smiled at Gwen Cooper, letting her through the Tourist Shops back entry, and felt a frisson of relief-worry. The smell of cooling pizza churns his stomach.

This’ll be enough of a distraction, for now.

Jack will be distracted by her, be distracted by cleavage and the Welsh accent he seemed to be so weak against, and Ianto would stay in the background.

Stay in the background, and everything was set up for Tanizaki to come to Cardiff, so he would use the distraction to the best of his ability, and hope, and worry, and do his best not to throw up from stress.

He doesn’t know it then, but the distraction stretches on.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He would be annoyed at how easily Jack let Gwen Cooper into Torchwood if he wasn’t busy with Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, and if Gwen Cooper wasn’t enough of a distraction that he could’ve smuggled an elephant past the rest of Torchwood Three without comment. Because Gwen Cooper brings inexperience, and unleashes a Sex Mist, and fiddles with alien machinery like it’s a child’s toy, and everyone is scrambling to do their own jobs on top of making sure she didn’t get anyone killed.

It’s _nothing_ to get Tanizaki in.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

“Remarkable,” Tanizaki says, reverent, “absolutely remarkable…”

After the initial denial—“This is not possible!” “This is Lisa.”—Tanizaki had started his… examination.

Ianto wasn’t comfortable by the fact that Tanizaki obviously saw Lisa as a science project. Didn’t like the way he looked like he wanted more to see how he could get it to complete the process than to reverse it… but he’d told Ianto about reverse engineering. Told Ianto that it taught him much more about an unknown project than completing it. “Her,” he corrected him. “Not ‘it’.”

“Tell me… what happened? How did you find her?”

Ianto swallowed, and his gloved hand came up to his throat to rub, slightly. He pushed it down.

“She… worked for Torchwood London. It was the, uh, end of the Battle of Canary Warf, and the Cybermen realized that they needed more soldiers… fast. So they started converting whole bodies. Rather than transferring just the brain.” He swallowed again.

“They used Earth Technology… They found their way into one of the Archives storage floors. Started using… started using what was on hand.” He couldn’t help but choke out a laugh at that. On _Hand_. Right.

“I found where Lisa had been taken to. To, uh, they had to. Right. They had already… They had already s-started on her and. I couldn’t. I just.” Ianto swallow again, mouth dry, and tried to organize his thoughts. He could hear the screams, still, felt the phantom ache in his throat from when he was screaming himself, and felt the ache in his shoulder where…

Right.

Tanizaki was looking at him. Ianto tried for a smile. Felt it probably fell short, more of a rictus.

“Right, um. I think you should… well, you should know that it wasn’t just Lisa. It wasn’t…” Ianto took a breath, and started undoing the clasp at his wrist keeping his glove from slipping out of place. “It wasn’t _only_ Lisa. I… got caught. Looking for Lisa. But by then I had… Okay, they had less time for me… but they did something, _looked_ inside my head, and apparently they thought I was good for an, an upgrade, and started on me, but by then I had…”

Ianto didn’t know why it was so hard to get out. So hard to get out _I lost my arm_ to this man, hard to get out _it was zapped clean off_ , when he was there to _help_ —

He dimly realized that his hand was shaking, making it more difficult to remove his glove, but by then Tanizaki had seen the flash of metal and gasped. Rushed back around Lisa’s equipment and held his hands around Ianto’s wrist, reverential.

“It’s…” Tanizaki seemed a loss for words.

Ianto smiled a humorless grin. His heart pounded in his chest, hollow.

“Yeah. I know.” But he didn’t think Tanizaki quite got it.

How could he? How could anyone get it? He’d lost his arm—had it _vaporized_ clean off—and hadn’t even had the time to mourn it, to fully comprehend that he was _missing a whole arm_ because he’d had Lisa to focus on.

Had Lisa to focus on then, had her to focus on now, and now he had to focus on himself, and he just didn’t want to. Didn’t want to, and didn’t want to, and didn’t want to…

His smile turned brittle.

“Daleks took my arm, and Cybermen gave me a new one.” Forced it on him. Cannibalized the box of unidentified scraps he was _supposed_ to be labeling into a limb, and attached it to the cauterized _lump_ —

The words were bitter on his tongue, but Tanizaki let out a shaky breath. Awed.

“May I see—”

“You should be focusing on Lisa.” He cuts him off.

“Yes, yes, but if I can just see—to compare…” his eyes were shining with wonder. Ianto could understand how this would be huge to someone like Tanizaki, huge to the study of Cybernetics, to Kinesiology and the development of prosthetics… but it didn’t mean he was happy about it.

Ianto started undoing the buttons of his suit jacket.

“Fine.”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

The first time Ianto has time to fully focus on his arm, it’s after a whirlwind of thoughts and mindless action. It’s after knowing he had to hide his arm; pulling the coat off the body of Rodger Thomas (dead), knowing he had to hide Lisa (not dead, _not dead_ ) and keep her alive; listening to her instructions between screams, both hers and his own…

So when he makes it to a shower, he mindlessly undresses and doesn’t register what he sees in the mirror. The blood and dust and sweat turn his skin scaly, his shoulder swollen an angry red beneath, and he doesn’t see, doesn’t know what to do with the sight of a shining metal arm attached to himself.

Dully, as he stared, the ache registers to him. The feeling of cauterized flesh pressed against skin-warmed metal. The new and horrifying ache in each movement, where it feels like the metal is encasing the stump of bone left in is arm.

A choked sob escapes him, because his arm—

He doesn’t even register the fact that his other arm—his only arm—comes up to claw at the already scraped and raw skin of his shoulder, nails digging into the place where flesh and metal meet, digging, clawing—

_Get it off get it off get it **off** —_

Until his hand is being wrenched away.

A scream shudders its way up his throat, but dies before it can fully form, because his arm— _the arm_ —is holding him back. It’s moving on its own. It’s holding his wrist firmly away from his shoulder, effortlessly, and no matter how Ianto squirmed, he couldn’t get free. He can’t find the air to breathe.

 _There’s not enough air_ , he thinks desperately. _The arm is taking all the air from the room,_ he thinks, horrified.

His gorge rises, and his hand is free to keep him from bashing his head against the edge of the toilet as he empties what’s left in his stomach.

Retches again when he catches sight of the metal hand clutching the edge of the bowl, a mirror image to his own on the left save for the cracks in the porcelain, and tries to breath through his panic attack.

Shaking so hard his teeth were rattling, Ianto tries to calm down, tries to _calm the fuck down already_ , and clenches his eyes shut.

Takes a deep, shuddery breath.

Opens his eyes.

Clenches his hand against the edge of the bowl—

And flinches when the action is repeated by the mechanical—the _cybernetic_ arm, and sends cracks straight through the porcelain.

Water starts dribbling onto the floor, and he hurries to get up, shock warring with confusion and horror.

Tries to move the arm, flex the fingers…

Doesn’t know if he should be more or less horrified when the limb responds.

His gorge rises again, but there’s nothing left in his stomach, so he’s left dry heaving into the sink. He makes a desperate grab for his shoulder again—is intercepted before he can reach. By the arm. His shoulder burns and aches, the skin all around where _his_ arm used to be swollen and tender and bleeding.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Wants to go and talk to Lisa, have Lisa tell him what the fuck he was supposed to do now like it was yet more instructions on how to turn a conversion machine into life support, but she was unconscious, and he—

Well.

He was left staring at hic cybernetic arm. The one that did what he wanted most of the time… so long as he didn’t try to remove it.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Tanizaki is delicate and professional as he examines where the metal arm joins his shoulder, prodding the ropey and still delicate scarring surrounding the area, and bends the arm at all it’s various joints.

Ianto sighs.

He thought that maybe if he hadn’t found the numerous physical therapy exercises to do online, it would have hurt much more than the dull ache the prodding produced.

He sighed again.

He supposes he’s lucky that his arm doesn’t actually look like a Cyberman’s arm—convenient because he didn’t think an arm like that would fit under any sort of jacket, never mind his suits, but it didn’t make him like looking at it any more.

He supposes, too, that the arm could be considered attractive…

He could see the appeal of all that sleek metal, the perpetual shine…

It wasn’t like Ianto polished it.

“These joints are amazing,” Tanizaki breathed, holding his hand. He curled and uncurled his fingers, looking at the sweeps of metal and squeezing along each joint; feeling for any give in the metal.

“Simply astounding… This is so different from what I saw from the footage…”

“From what I understand, underneath all the metal, the Cybermen have a nervous system of a sort, transferred from when they were human… my arm was already, ah, _gone_ , so they had to do things differently… I don’t actually know why they were focusing so much on getting me a new arm, rather than—rather than doing what they did to Lisa.” It was a thought that bugged him more than having a cybernetic arm did… he couldn’t quite shake the fear that maybe the arm was just biding its time to start another conversion unit. And not one cannibalized into a life support system like the one Lisa’s hooked up to, either. Maybe it had hidden programming. Ianto didn’t know… there was nothing showing what was underneath the layers of metal, no ports or places to plug anything in. There also wasn’t any sort of weapon as far as he could see; even the tips of the fingers had only vague indentations for ‘nails’. They were only vaguely sharp.

He looked over Tanizaki’s head to meet Lisa’s eyes. They were slightly clouded from the medicinal cocktail keeping her from being in pain, but she answered his wavering smile with one of her own.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Of course, it’s when things are looking their best when things turn the worst.

After looking over Ianto, Tanizaki had poked and prodded and tweaked at both Lisa and the machinery keeping her alive. To Ianto it had reminded him sharply of the teachers who used to fiddle at his and his classmates science projects in order to see how well it worked, but Lisa had given him a reassuring glance.

The questions Tanizaki had asked her had made Ianto uncomfortable, made his stomach seize up with nausea and remembrance, had made his arm shift restlessly at his side…

It had leapt onto Tanizakis arm when he’d gone to pull her off the life support system, and while his delight in the involuntary motion and the steel grip around his arm was obvious on his face, his confidence in his work was what made Ianto pry the metal fingers loose.

(He said pry, but it was only because saying that he thought that he would have to pry them off, and had them respond made him think that the arm responded to what he wanted—those thoughts were dangerous ones. He couldn’t forget that the arm did things on its own.)

“You know I’ll likely kill you if you let her die,” he felt he should warn.

Tanizaki paused, and gave him a look. Glanced down at his arm with a small smile quirking his lips.

“I can believe it. If _you_ don’t manage it, _that_ certainly will.”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Turns out neither Ianto nor his cybernetic arm kill Tanizaki. Lisa does.

(…after trying to convert him. Ianto doesn’t think on this. Because she wouldn’t do that. Lisa _wouldn’t do that_.)

He stares at Jack, hurting and aching and so full of murderous rage everything is turning into one big thumping noise.

He would not kill her. He would not kill Lisa.

He’d had a horrible moment of conflict, where he’d been worried about Myfanwy, worried about Lisa, worried about Myfanwy— how many times had he distracted Lisa from her pain with tales of looking after a Pteranodon? How many times had Lisa teased him about naming said dinosaur after a woman with an amazing voice, when she could hear her screeches from the bowels of Torchwood Three?

He couldn’t think.

He couldn’t think, and he hurt.

He had had such a phantom ache in his entire arm, in the entire cybernetic arm, that he’d struggled like he had a broken arm. He struggled with one arm limp. When the lift had stopped, the hurt in his shoulder and all along his arm (the one that wasn’t actually there, so why did it hurt—) was nothing compared to the gaping wound where his heart was supposed to be.

He hates that his idea of training Myfanwy to identify her food via a specific sauce had been used against Lisa.

When Tosh says they can get back in he doesn’t think, doesn’t think anything, doesn’t think that it’s true, doesn’t think that _nothing_ , _no one_ could survive an attack like that.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing when he grabs the gun, doesn’t care if it was him or the arm grabbing it up, can’t even muster up the thought that he’d probably be more deadly if he used the hand rather that the gun, because he can’t—he can’t—

“I have nothing left to lose.” Gwen doesn’t understand that, not when she thinks that anything done right now could be _stupid_.

“There’s always something left to lose.”

His hand tightens on the gun, and he can feel metal giving under the pressure, can feel the leather of his glove creaking from the strain… the gun probably wouldn’t fire bullets anymore.

It’s a relief and a tragedy.

He wants to beat Jacks face in.

He thinks about just whipping his glove off, see if they’d give up on him like they did Lisa. See if they’d change their minds about Lisa if they saw…

But there was no time for possibilities. He trains the probably useless gun on Jack.

“I’m going back in to save her. Anybody tries to stop me, I’ll shoot them.” Maybe. Or maybe something worse.

Gwen moves and he automatically jerks the gun around to face her, finger steady on the trigger, and Jack moves.

Grabs the gun, twists his arm—tries, because Ianto is already moving, trying to turn into the open doorway, except Jack grabs his other arm and twists it up behind his back.

Perhaps he should have let him grab his right arm, his cybernetic arm, because there was no way Jack could have held him if he did.

As it is, he winces into the press of the doorframe, and glares back at Jack. Curses his arm.

A week ago it had moved and nearly broke a barista’s arm for nearly spilling hot coffee on him, and what was it doing now? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It wasn’t responding.

It was the first time he’d ever felt like he didn’t have his arm.

“You make a threat like that you better be prepared to follow through.”

In any other situation, Ianto would have rolled his eyes and taken it as one more innuendo filled line.

Instead, he can see the barrel in the corner of his eye, and hear the tick of his pocket watch.

Time is running out.

He had to save Lisa.

He thinks this as Jack shoves him around and threatens him, threatens him like an immature frat boy at initiation, and he feels a warped calm settle over his nerves.

Tries to say that Ianto’s loyalty was with _them_ now.

That’s not his call to make.

Jack orders him to kill Lisa.

That’s not his call, either.

“You can’t make me.” He almost wants to smile, except he doesn’t know how any more.

“You like to think you’re a hero,” he says instead, “but you’re the biggest monster of all.”

He doesn’t even know what his face is doing any more, just feels a vicious satisfaction at how his words obviously effect Jack—he thinks it’s the first time he’s seen Jack effected by anything. No flirts or innuendo here, Jack.

Because the words were said.

Monster.

He almost wants to laugh, that _he_ was the one with a cybernetic arm and _he_ was the one name calling… almost, but can’t remember how.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ten minutes.

Jack gave him ten minutes, and a most likely useless gun.

He wasn’t worried about the gun, but he was very conscious of the time limit. He had ten minutes before Torchwood came in and—

He had to save Lisa in less than ten minutes.

When he gets inside he looks about at the scattered equipment, at the boxes and—wait, was that pizza? He hadn’t...

(Oh no.)

Myfanwy called from up above, and he wants to check on her, except—

Lisa.

And… the pizza boxes. He caught a whiff of cheese, tomato, and garlic, still warm…

(Oh no, no, no...)

Alarms are blaring, lights flashing, and he has… roughly seven minutes.

He runs.

“Lisa! Lisa!”

His heart nearly stops when he sees her, on the ground, the blood and alarms and stillness of her making him think back, makes him think back to his nightmares where he finds Lisa at Canary Warf, not screaming… not screaming because she’s….

(Dead.)

He doesn’t remember anything between then and when he’s at her side, blank eyes staring up at him, blood on his hands…

It’s her blood on his hands, her blood, and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t…

“…Ianto?”

He’s up with the useless gun in hand immediately, because it’s not Tosh or Gwen who’s speaking, and he’s _not fucking letting anyone near Lisa_ , not like this.

Not like this.

He can barely breath through the choking pressure in his throat, arm steady as he listens to Not-Lisa’s voice speak the same way Lisa did, speak her memories like they were little tokens that came along with your id, speak like she hadn’t just killed a girl and taken her body…

He lets himself hug her once.

(Only once)

Hug Not-Lisa, and breath into hair Lisa never kept that long, breath in her Not-Lisa scent, bend down a little bit farther than he would have for Lisa, Lisa, Lisa…

It’s Lisa’s expression of confusion that looks back at him as he steps back, brings the gun back up, until his vision blurs from tears and he wants to shout at her to _give Lisa back_ …

He pulls the trigger, and nothing happens.

It doesn’t even click.

There’s a hole in his chest and it’s going to swallow him whole, he has to turns away from her, rub the tears from his eyes and curse at himself, curse at _fucking Cybermen_ , curse at Tanizaki, curse that leather _doesn’t fucking work_ to clean up tears…

“We can be upgraded… together…” Not-Lisa— _never_ Lisa—says, appeals.

_Upgraded._

Bile climbs to the back of his throat.

The shots that come behind him are totally unexpected, shocking, appalling, and though it was never Lisa he can’t help but anguish that she’s dead.

He looks at Torchwood, Gwen’s wide eyed astonishment, Owen’s pitying glance, Tosh not even looking— likely trying to give him some illusion of privacy for his grief, and…

Jack.

Fucking Jack.

Ianto wants to punch him again, this time with his right fucking arm, this time bash his stupid fucking face in until he can’t look at anything ever again, let alone give Ianto that steady ‘ _it had to be done_ ’ bullshit of a look.

He thinks that this man, this is the only person in the entire world he wants dead. Only person in the world he has ever wanted dead.

And his stupid fucking homicidal arm is still at his side.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He has three weeks to ‘get his shit together’; three weeks set to mourn before he was expected back at work.

Expected to work under Jack Harkness.

Walking in the door is as conspicuous as it ever is, alarms blazing, the cage doors closing behind him never before seeming so symbolic…

He looks up and sees Jack, and Gwen beside him.

He wondered if Jack had fucked her yet.

He wondered if she’d even broken up with her boyfriend before doing it.

Jack blinks and nods to him.

After three weeks suspension, Ianto doesn’t have any feelings left, so he turns and starts cleaning. It isn’t as bad as he’d have thought…

A slow, low burn in his gut has him thinking, has him thinking that Jack probably thinks that he has… what was it he’d said? That Ianto’s loyalty is to _them_ now?

Jack probably thought he had it now.

Probably thought that because Ianto had come back, that he was loyal to Torchwood now, loyal to Jack.

He probably hadn’t thought about the fact that Ianto had his reason for living wrenched from him… probably didn’t realize that for three weeks Ianto had bounced from one extreme to another.

He’d raged; he’d cried, he’d contemplated suicide; he’d contemplated murder, he’d felt all degrees of guilt and shame…

He’d had Lisa on life support for such a long time, and for her to end up dead in the end. Dead, and turned into some… Cyberman wannabe. A Cyberwoman. In the end she wasn’t even Lisa any more…

(she might never have been Lisa, Lisa might have been dead at Canary Warf, but he doesn’t think, doesn’t think on that…)

And he couldn’t even put her out of her misery.

He’d tried to shoot her. He’d tried to shoot Lis—not-Lisa. It was unforgivable. More so than the fact that the gun…

The gun didn’t work. He knew it wouldn’t… he’d tried to shoot her anyway.

Tried, and failed. Both were bad, but one was infinitely worse.

It wasn’t Lisa anymore, and yet he’d still….

Instead, Jack had.

He had no doubt that the first bullet was Jacks.

Did he think that had earned him Ianto’s loyalty? Or perhaps he’d thought he’d had it after performing CPR on him? Is that why he’d tried to force Ianto’s hand?

_I saved your life; now go kill your girlfriend._

_I saved your life; now go kill the woman you were planning on proposing to._

_I saved your life; now go kill your reason for living._

_Do it._

Ianto felt numb. He didn’t…

He didn’t know what to do anymore.

He’d hated and raged at Jack for so long, for _three fucking weeks_ , and he’d… he’d raged so much that he broke through to the other side.

—No, not the other side…

He’d reached some sort of limbo.

He didn’t know if he should be angry or grateful.

He didn’t know if he loved or hated him.

He didn’t know if he even had enough of a clear thought of him to have any sort of feeling for him one way or another.

He had very little left of a personal life, leaving Torchwood to take up more space…

All that he really had to himself, now, was his sister Rhi and…

Well.

His hands clenched.

He only had one thing left to hide…

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Gasp!* What will happen when his arm is revealed…????????  
> :D  
> So yes, another story started, this time with a cyber-armed Ianto, and this is part of my Camp Nanowrimo Challenge… Woo! I’m at 10569 words total, over like 6 stories! (Thank RandomPersonOfDoom for that. Thanks friend. -_-;;)  
> For those waiting on Too Tired To Wink (sequel to And I Wake Up), I apologize, but the last couple of pages have been difficult! Like, wow what was I thinking, why do I have to have this in the story, but wait, I wrote so much of it now I have to finish writing this...  
> These are the sorts of things I’m thinking of.  
> This is what happens when you’ve got a 20 year old writing pregnancy and labor.  
> *shakes fist* Whyyyyyyyyy Gwen? Whyyyyyyy?  
> Also, Ianto’s such a dramatic fuck it’s amazing and sad.  
> More to come, and though I’m not going to do a 10k/chapter thing for this, I think that since I got this to about 5k that’ll be how long each chapter is for this.  
> Hope you enjoyed, and wowza the sadness and angsting at the end of this.  
> Thanks to my dearest Random Person of Doom for dealing with my equally random idea jumping and OMG what-ifs.


	2. Camping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I would like to mention now that unless someone comes out with an actual timeline for these episodes (and I mean that as actual time), I’m just going to take things in a wibbly-wobbly fashion.  
> So while the time between each episode may be different to you, depending on your headcanon, I don’t particularly have a timeline headcanon myself so I’m being flexible here.  
> I’m glad you’ve all been enjoying this so far, and in response to the anonymous Guest who commented, yes, this Ianto is a bit entitled seeming, but I think that’s explainable, seeing as how not only does he have to deal with the sh*t of Lisa’s situation, he also has to deal with trying to cope with having lost an arm, had it forcibly replaced, and being stressed hiding his arm and Lisa while trying to find a ‘cure’. Also, glad you’re enjoying my AIWU and T3W ‘verse, and thanks to a friend of mine and her insane ability to gave me a dozen prompts, I’m likely going to be posting more stories in the near future…  
> *shakes fist*  
> Hope you enjoy!

When Ianto contemplated how he would be found out—because he _would_ , eventually be found out—he did not envision it like this.

Then, of course, he never really contemplated cannibals in his future, so he supposed he should be giving himself some slack.

He wished the ropes that bound his hands had some slack to them.

That would be nice.

His hand was losing circulation—the give of having two flesh wrists bound being restricted to the one was… unfortunate. Uncomfortable.

Made him worry about losing more limbs.

(He briefly considers using the line “ _Unhand me!”_ at some point, but…)

Tosh stared back at him from the other side of the room—hovel thing, really—eyes wide and terrified.

For the moment, it was because of the bat one of the men was hefting.

Ianto thought that in another moment, when the man tried to bludgeon Ianto with it, the fear in her eyes would have to do with Ianto, hah, _single handedly_ killing their captors.

Single Handedly.

Not necessarily with one arm behind his back, but the idea was still there.

He had the vain hope that perhaps the arm would find a more… _discrete_ way of violently protecting him, but he might as well be wishing to not be in this situation at all.

It would be more likely to happen, anyway…

If he was honest with himself, and he might as well be, he could admit that he was surprised he’d lasted this long.

After… well, after Lisa he’d figured he’d last maybe a week if he was careful, but instead here he was a good two months and a band (flock, gaggle, group, murder, pack, herd) of Faeries later… still alive, still _not_ locked up, still… whatever.

Now, not so much.

_This… this is why I was happy not going out into the field. This is why._

After being bludgeoned from behind, he’d woken up in a dark space with Tosh… Tosh was still out of it, and he hadn’t been tied up. He remembered this time fondly.

He’d never thought about it before, but he rather liked not being tied up.

He’d pulled off his left glove and felt the back of his head, pressing gingerly at the knot, and when he heard Tosh stirring pulled his glove back on.

He was stained and dirty but he wouldn’t be wandering around with only one glove on.

(that sort of thing had people asking things like ‘why do you only have one glove on?’ and ‘what happened to your hand?’)

“You know… I never liked camping.”

And he didn’t. Lisa had, which was why he knew so much about it, but it wasn’t something he enjoyed.

~~(The first time he’d gone camping, a dog had pissed on their tent… gods he missed Lisa)~~

You could never brew a good cup of coffee ‘out in the bush’.

Tosh looked around, and he told her they’d taken the guns…

He’d been awake a while longer than she had, and had all that time to look around their makeshift cell.

Solid doors that in any other situation he would admire for their sturdiness, too-small windows, and no real way of getting out. No way of lighting up the place, either.

Of course, even as he thought this Tosh pulled out a small torch from her pants leg.

Ianto wondered if she’d been a girl scout.

Brought up his mental file on her… no, no, she hadn’t.

He brought it up again when she says that she hasn’t yet found a cell she couldn’t get out of, remembering the notes UNIT had made on her while she was imprisoned, and felt cautiously optimistic.

He’d still prefer she answer his question on their chances of rescue, all the same, but if he had to be stuck in a cell with someone he’d prefer it be with Tosh…

Or Jack, but that was because Jack had a way of slipping out of troublesome situations.

But Tosh was good, because she had more of a reason than anyone to make sure she wouldn’t be helplessly stuck in a cell ever again, and that was good.

Sad, but good.

She asked him to try to get a light to work—and oh, thanks, he hadn’t thought of doing that, but he decided to give it another try all the same.

Commenting on the fact that she and the rest of Torchwood seem to be addicted to being in situations like this—situations where things get out of control, where there’s danger spilling over the horizon in a flood, the look of satisfied enjoyment in their eyes…

He wondered if any of them would enjoy having a cybernetic arm.

He considered whom _exactly_ he was trapped with, and couldn’t help but laugh.

It broke some of the tension between them, and Ianto laughed again that she should have had that suspect cheeseburger, earlier.

And then there was no more laughing, because shoes should never seem so foreboding.

Thinking back on it now, it’s almost funny how scary all the shoes had been, considering now there was… well, _cannibals_.

They might be aliens who look like humans, but— _cannibals_.

Cannibal _hicks._

It probably wasn’t wise, but a hysterical laugh bubbled out of him, because gods if he could have a choice of what kind of person killed and ate him, he’d prefer someone like Hannibal Lecter over these people…

At least then he’d know he wouldn’t be fried up like bacon, or, or—

He couldn’t think of anything else.

He knew he’d eaten other things than bacon, but that was the only thing that came to mind.

He supposed there were worse things, but— _bacon_?

And, if he weren’t turned into bacon, he’d still be locked up after this, because unless they knocked out or killed Tosh before they came after him, he wouldn’t be getting out of here without the promise of being locked up.

He looked at Tosh again, and thought how much he’d really like her not to die. They weren’t exactly friends—Ianto wasn’t friends with _anyone_ in Torchwood—but he didn’t want her to die.

He looked to the side, where the blonde woman from before was, and thought that he really wouldn’t mind if _she_ died…

He was still annoyed at himself for falling for her _I’m a victim too_ routine.

 _Honestly_ , for _him_ to have been fooled by an act of innocence…

So, when Big And Ugly turns to him, he smiles his biggest, fakest smile, and takes some satisfaction in head-butting him.

It hurts—fuck, it hurts, but he’s distracted, and maybe if they run fast enough he won’t end up alive and locked up after this.

It was still the preferred option to dead and eaten, but he was doing his best to stay optimistic.

That was hard to do when their escape plan gets him a punch in the face.

And then kicked in the kidne—

It feels like his arm is going to be ripped from its socket, like his hand is going to be ripped off before that, and he’s wrenched around.

He feels it, vaguely, in his shoulder when the kick lands on his arm, but the three-second wrenching in his arm earlier hurts more.

His hand gets a gentle pat on it, and it’s startling to realize that his arm—the cybernetic one—intentionally moved him so he would get the least damage.

He’s shocked enough that he doesn’t move when the but of the gun comes down on his face, and he only has a split moment to be thankful that at least Tosh got away.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Danger._

_Danger._

_Danger._

_Danger._

_Must Defend._

_Protective Measures:_

_Calculating……………………_

_Calculations Finished._

_Recalibrating Survival Mode._

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He keeps that feeling of being thankful in mind as his face is being beaten in.

He’d like to keep in mind that at least the worst of it is happening to his face, except that some kicks and beatings hit elsewhere.

His torso is fine for the most part—he didn’t know he could squirm like this until his own arm was twisting and wrenching him into each position…

He’s worried about his legs, as he can only redirect the hits so much to his arm, but it’s getting harder and harder to focus on the positive. There’s only so much his head and face can take before things stop making sense.

Stop making sense, like why wasn’t his arm getting him out of this situation already? Why was it just redirecting 80% of the blows, when it could get him away from 100% of them?

He’d understood the reason earlier, earlier when his head wasn’t aching, when he didn’t just want to sit down and sleep… something about how if Tosh escaped, the rest of Torchwood would come to the rescue. If Tosh escaped, and he had to believe that she did, Tosh was clever like that, she was really lovely and he thought that perhaps he’d like to be friends later, maybe, possibly, especially if she got the rest of Torchwood here to stop all this, because then she would be the cleverest and most lovely woman of all time, and why was Owen such a prat to her?

Ianto didn’t know, but then he didn’t know lots of things.

Like why his stupid cybernetic arm wasn’t getting him out of this situation.

He remembered, vaguely, that if he revealed his arm he was likely going to be locked up if he wasn’t shot execution style, but really, what was wrong with being locked up?

It had a number of good points going for it, certainly, like not being beaten, like not feeling like his head would explode into one big bruise, like… like….

Well, he’d really like it if they’d stop beating him.

Being locked up, he’d likely also get some ice for his aching face, and he wouldn’t be thrown to the hard ground like he is right—

_Oof._

He’d also like the gag out of his mouth; it’d likely be easier to breath without it, easier to catch the breath that was just punched out of him.

Oh, the ground, it was rather nice, he’d like to sleep now.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Assessing Condition:_

_Calculating…………_

_Calculations Complete._

_Unsatisfactory._

_Assessing Surroundings:_

_Calculating………_

_Calculations Complete._

_Results:_

_Positive._

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

“What have you done to Ianto?”

The sound of his name rouses him, damn it all, and he just wants to sleep.

This headache is worse than any hangover, it’s worse than anything imaginable, and Big and Ugly needs to take a bath because the stink of him is making all the bad things worse.

He’s making things even more worse with the cleaver he’s holding against his throat.

His eyes skim over the members of Torchwood, thinking _oh, how nice of them to show up to see him killed._

_Oh, how nice of them to take advantage of Tosh escaping to get caught themselves._

_Oh, it was actually nice of them to ask after him_ … he thinks this last bit honestly, because even through the thick film separating him from reality, he’d heard the frightened concern in their voices. The noise of alarm from Owen was probably due to the fact that Ianto was likely looking like one big bruise, the Doctor in him taking it all in, but the concern was still there.

It was nice.

Owen was still a prat.

The hug from Gwen was nice, but _painfulpainfulpainful_ , and likely less painful than if he’d been thrown to the ground again.

He hopes she doesn’t feel the hard metal of his arm.

It would really suck if even after keeping his arm hidden after all this time, he was still found out.

And from a hug.

Gods, that would be embarrassing…

And then Jack breaks through the wall with a tractor, guns blazing, and he’d laugh if his ribs weren’t bruised.

He wondered if Jack knew that he wasn’t actually the leading character in an action movie…

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Later, when Ianto is avoiding Owen and trying to make it look like he’s been checked out by the medics out of the ambulance, while also trying to reassure them that he was getting looked after by his teams Doctor, he catches part of Gwen’s ‘interrogation’, and wants to shut at her for letting his teeth so close to her face. So close to her throat. He half-expects that Big and Ugly is going to bite off her ear or something equally horrible, but it doesn’t happen.

That shows him for being pessimistic.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Recalibrating………_

_Reassessing……_

_New Data Extrapolated._

_Base Functions:_

_Calculating……………………_

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Though he wants to, and he can tell Tosh wants to, neither of them asks the other to stick around.

Neither asks the other over to their place.

Neither asks for the comfort they both need.

Instead, Ianto stops by Tesco (and ignores the looks his beaten and bruised face gets him) and gets bags and bags of ice.

The walk home is slightly lop-sided, as he holds all of his ice in his right hand (his left hand still tender and shaking), and he’s never been so happy to have a full bathroom in his life.

He fills his tub with ice and water, and leaves to get his bed made up, to reset the thermostat, and then starts stripping.

His shirt is entirely ruined. The dirt stains will never come out of it.

Sinking into the bath is a painful relief; bruises throbbing heat under the chill.

He cups his hands, the metal on his right still looking strange in contrast, and presses ice to his face and neck in turn.

When he can no longer stand the cold of the water, he gets out and huddles in a thick towel, pressing the now cold metal of his hand to his face again and again to keep the swelling down.

He’s physically and mentally exhausted, almost falling asleep in the bath once he gets back in it, but his thoughts still race in circles around his head.

Because he could’ve been discovered this time.

It was a very close thing.

He could have died.

That was also a very close thing.

He could have been discovered, and _then_ killed.

With the way Jack was strutting around, doling out bullets like they were party favors, that was a very likely thing to happen…

If he’d been discovered.

But he hadn’t.

He hadn’t.

He hadn’t.

He kept reminding himself of that, even after the ice cubes had all melted, even after he’d drained the tub and crawled into bed, even after he’d cocooned himself in blankets, and it was his last conscious thought when he finally fell asleep, shivering.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Calculating………_

_Calculations Complete._

_Base Functions Reset._

_Initiatives Updated._

_Vitals Noted._

_Sleep Mode._

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I hope you enjoyed that, and if you’re disappointed that I’m not doing an episode/chapter, with each episode, sorry but there are some episodes where Ianto just isn’t a big part of things, where he’s mostly left to his own devices, so yeah. Feel like I should be saying more on this, but after discovering that Ianto’s actually a badass, and not just a butler who has great one-liners, re-watching the series brings attention to the fact that for the first while he really *isn’t* that big of a character.  
> I like him, but he’s not really a big part of season 1. I know, sadness :C  
> I’m working on all my other stories at the moment, or at least all the ones I’ve been working on the past two years, and while I know it’s difficult, please have patience.  
> Also please stop shouting at me to update, it’s making me nervous when that’s all you have to say. :S  
> Next chapter should be up relatively soon, because if you didn’t know that Camp Nano is happening, well, it is (similar to NaNoWriMo, so….), and I’m WAAAAAY behind.  
> So yeah, rewatching a great deal of Torchwood, and writing, and look forward to more :)  
> RandomPersonOfDoom, I still curse you giving me so many prompts.  
> *shakes fist*


	3. Mary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies now for shortness, and also for… well, actually, I’ll leave that for you to figure out.  
> Enjoy!

 

Ianto knows the exact moment that he suspects Tosh of being up to something, because in that moment he wonders to himself if he’d have noticed at all if he weren’t hyperaware of how he held himself.

If he weren’t entirely conscious of how he held his arm in comparison to the rest of his body.

Because if he weren’t, he didn’t think he’d notice the fact that immediately after he comes through the door to look after the Tourist station, Tosh was hiding her arm behind her back. And trying to make it look casual.

Trying and, probably to everyone else, succeeding…

Except Ianto had been practicing _not_ hiding his arm behind his back enough that he could see that she wasn’t actually holding her hand that way back casually.

“… Are you alright?” He asks, instead of his usual ‘Good Morning.’

“Oh, well…. Yes, yes! I’m fine. Yes, I’ll just, er…” she gestured past him, and Ianto moved out of her way.

Tosh and he were… sort of friends now, made so with a shared experience with Cannibals, after a few nights drinking with each other, and though he knew that Tosh was a bad liar in general, he now knew that she was an even worse liar when it came to people she felt friendly with.

A part of him admired her for it.

That same part made him feel horribly guilty over keeping secrets.

And thinking of secrets made him think about Lisa, and that came with a whole slew of feelings he couldn’t quite handle…

So instead of thinking on it, on Tosh, he instead focuses on tidying the Tourist office.

He didn’t know why it actually needed it, didn’t understand how it could get so dirty when the tourist office wasn’t open enough to get more than two or three lost families wandering in in a month…

Truly, some things baffle the mind.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Detecting Lowered Levels of Noradrenalin…_

_Calculating…_

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto looked up when Tosh jerked, pulling his own thoughts back to the present.

She made eye contact for half a moment before looking wildly around, and Ianto wondered if she was expecting someone else to be there.

“You alright Tosh?”

“Yes, I’m, ah… is… there someone else around? Did… did Jack bring someone in?”

Ianto raised an eyebrow. Not that he knew of…

And he’d certainly know about it—everyone would, what with that damnable buzzer over the door… the sound brought to mind bank robberies and the general feeling of _oops! I’m not supposed to be here!_ A ridiculous feeling for when you come into work.

He shook his head, and Tosh laughed… a bit more than was merited for the situation, but at least she seemed a more relaxed. A little less manic.

He shook his head, and went to to get coffee for everyone.

He thought he should be worried that being concerned for people was tiring for him now…

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Calculation Complete._

_Nourishment Needed._

_Procure High-Sucrose Items and Caffeinated Beverage._

_Procuring…_

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Tosh looked at him, wide eyed again when he brought out a tray holding all their coffee mugs, but he was distracted from thinking on it when, after he’d put the tray down and let the rest of the team descend on their mugs, his hand went to his own without his meaning to.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Procured._

_Drink Caffeinated Beverage._

_Drink Now._

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

It then pulled his mug to his face abruptly, and he had to jerk to keep hot coffee from spilling over himself.

He didn’t notice Tosh pulling back from sipping from her own mug and looking at it with suspicion, because he was busy trying to look casual while forcing his arm down.

It was hot, and he didn’t know why his arm was doing this _now_ , why it was doing this in front of _the entire fucking team_.

“Something wrong with your arm, Tea Boy?”

Ianto looked up at Owen and smiled, hoping he was getting across _oh, nothing to see here_. He looked down at how he was holding his arm—it looked a bit like he was holding it in pain.

“Oh, I, ah, strained it. A bit. Moving… cabinets in the Archives. Nothing wrong.”

He carefully pulled his mug into his left hand, and casually brought it up to sip.

He didn’t notice that Tosh had taken a sip at the same time, busy with flexing his free hand for show. Owen scoffed.

“Yeah, well, you might get a better grip if you took off those gloves of yours once in a while…”

Ianto raised his eyebrows at Owen.

“Of course… and then I can leave greasy fingerprints everywhere like you do.”

“Oh, sod off—”

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about Owen,” a voice said rom above. Jack grinned at Ianto, leaning over the railing. “I like it…”

“I’ll go get the Sexual Harassment forms out again, shall I, Sir?”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto wondered at his arm trying to force coffee on him, trying to figure out what, exactly was up with it, when not even half an hour later it tries to shove a cookie in his face.

He’s lucky no one was around to see it, as he hadn’t been expecting it at all and as a result got cookie crumbs smeared on his cheek.

He’s dusting crumbs away with his handkerchief when he hears a noise behind him.

Tosh is in the doorway, empty mu in hand, and it’s automatic to smile.

“Looking for a refill?”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Providers Noradrenalin Levels At Optimal Percentages._

_Note:_

_Caffeine Takes 45.38 Minutes To Effect Systems._

_Note Saved._

_Calculating Adaptive Levels………_

_Estimated Time Of Effect:_

_Approximately 7 Hours._

_Calculating Optimum Effects Of Caffeine On Systems…_

_Set Programs To Record Metabolic Progress._

_Programs Set._

_Calculations Complete._

_Recalibrating Base Functions…_

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He takes her mug, and wonders what she could be thinking to keep that wide-eyed look about her.

She’s been looking like Gwen did her first month with Torchwood, like she was expecting something strange and baffling to jump out at her any moment now.

Currently, she was giving that look to the coffee machine.

He hands over her (decaffeinated) coffee after doctoring it, and pauses.

“You… aren’t still annoyed that you can’t work the coffee machine, are you?”

He wonders if the wide-eyed look she was giving the machine was because she’d thought of something that would allow her to use the oddly finicky machine… Ianto had tried to teach her how to use the machine, but despite her proficiency with technology—particularly alien technology—the coffee maker was a blind spot.

An obvious one, one that she occasionally got annoyed enough to try and tackle…

Ianto always made sure he was there to make sure she didn’t accidentally break the thing.

It was unlikely, but…

She jerked.

“Oh, no! No, I was just wondering… have you…” she trailed off, frowning.

“Have you ever noticed anything… odd about the coffee machine?”

Ianto thought about it, but shook his head.

Aside from it being rather complex for a coffee maker, even by professional standards, it was simply the most-used alien artifact in Torchwood Three…

It was a secret wish of Ianto’s to one day get to visit/meet the aliens who brought about this amazing machine, because, as silly a thought it was, if there was ever an alien he’d love to sit down for a chat with, it would be them.

He’d love to discuss what else they knew about brewing coffee… aside from knowing how to make a coffee maker that must be some sort of sentient for how perfectly it made each batch.

“No, nothing in particular. Why?”

Tosh looked at him for a moment longer, grim faced, before shaking her head and bidding him farewell.

Ianto shook his head.

Not being able to work the coffee machine must really be bothering her.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto wants to hit himself.

He wants to hit himself, and then just—just drown his feelings in vodka and whiskey until he can deal with thinking about Lisa, because if he hadn’t been avoiding thinking about her, he wouldn’t have dismissed Tosh’s jumpiness.

He should know the signs of hiding a significant other.

He should know the signs of hiding something possibly troubling form the team.

He should know what it looked like when just about all the fucking signs were in front of him.

Instead, he’d avoided thinking about anything beyond coffee and cleaning and (non-cybernetic) aliens, and now it was very likely that he’d be locked up.

Because what were the chances that Tosh hadn’t heard him thinking about—

No, don’t think. It was a slight chance, but—

No.

He just needed to talk to Tosh before—

He was partially hidden, back near the green room, and he could see just about everything.

He wants to jerk forward when the blond woman, Mary, held what he assumed was a knife to Tosh’s throat…

He feels something like pity breaking through his panic, because Tosh deserved so much more than to fall in love with a prick with a doctorate, and a murderous, manipulative, telepathic alien.

But then panic takes over again, because if he didn’t talk to her first, she’d likely feel duty-bound to talk to Jack, same as she felt responsible enough to stop that man from killing his family… just like she felt responsible for Mary’s safety, despite the fact that she was, in fact, a murderous, manipulative, telepathic alien.

He’s torn between outrage and understanding and affection and fear—actually, he was feeling all that, all tinged with panic and a desperate urge to just run away.

And while he’s busy feeling all that, Jack of course steps in to save the day.

He was reminded exactly how brutal Jack could be, how cold, how heartless he could be, when he sends Mary to her death.

Ianto doesn’t feel sorry for her, but instead feels sorry for Tosh.

Misplaced or not, she’d loved Mary…

And if there was one thing both Ianto and Tosh shared, it was their tendency to put all their might into loving.

Ianto’s heart ached.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Jack dismisses everyone for the night.

Ianto panics, because Tosh stays behind, and he can’t decide if he wants to run as far from Cardiff as possible, or if he wants to resign himself to being locked up, or if he wants to try hoping that Tosh hadn’t heard him think anything like ‘ _oh by the way I have a cybernetic arm, and it occasionally acts on it’s own, slightly homicidal urges’…_

Can’t decide, can’t breathe when he gets to his apartment, and doesn’t remember falling asleep.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Excess Of Cortisol Detected In Provider._

_Survival Mode Initiated:_

_Protect Provider._

_Subset Guard Protocol; Level 3._

_High Alert._

_Sleep Mode Automatic Disable;_

_Code Delta Maroon Vega 35—_

_Sleep Mode To Be Implemented At Conclusion Of Survival Mode._

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

*Crunch*

“Well that’s dealt with…”

…

…

…

“Jack… There’s something I should tell you… I heard…”

“Yeah?”

“Jack, I—It’s something… I’m just… Jack, it’s Ianto. I have to tell you—”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, yes, but as I said before… I’m not doing every episode, but I am going to be focusing on Ianto, and this is an episode that didn’t have much of Ianto in it, and I wrote so much of behind the scenes…  
> I dunno what I’m saying. *sigh*  
> It’s 2:16 am and I had annoying people to deal with at work.  
> I know I’m evil, leaving it here, but please have patience!  
> I’m working on the next chapter, which should hopefully be a bit longer than this one was (sorry for the necessity of it), and thank you to all of you for being so supportive!  
> ~Doodled93~


	4. Suzie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a note, this is now a series, and also, I wrote a short side story that’s in this ‘verse from the episode ‘Random Shoes’, and it’s called Cyborg…   
> I was informed I would be mean if I posted it in this story before this chapter, so…   
> Enjoy!

Chapter 4

 

Ianto wakes up to the sound of pounding.

He doesn’t know if he should be relieved that it’s just the sound of his heart, rather than the sound of Jack pounding on his door.

It doesn’t make his heart slow down any.

He debates not going into work, but figures if Tosh hasn’t told Jack (highly improbably, but Ianto had found that being optimistic was the safer bet, these days, rather than letting pessimistic thoughts bring him into question), then he’d be making himself look suspicious not going in to work.

So he gets ready.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He isn’t accosted when he comes into work, and he doesn’t end up in any of the cells at all that morning…

He forces himself to look quizzically at Jack when, instead of a flirtatious grin and a leer, he’s greeted with a speculative glance.

When Tosh gets in, followed by Owen, she looks at him wide eyed for one moment before busying herself at her computers.

This… this makes him pause.

He ignored Tosh hiding something once, and look where it got him.

He frowns, and heads to the kitchen to make up a batch of coffee… he should have gotten it ready for everyone before, and it was likely that Gwen would be in sooner than later, so—

“Oh, Ianto, don’t bother with that today.”

He pauses on the stairs, and turns.

“Sir?”

There’s no flirtatious grin on his face, no sign of a joke, no hint that he was kidding, when Jack looks back ta him.

“No coffee today, Ianto.”

He blinks.

He has the uncomfortable feeling that he might be gaping at Jack.

“No coffee?” he can’t wrap his mind around the thought.

_“What?!?”_

Owen storms up from the Autopsy bay, face red an alarmed.

“I repeat; _What_? No coffee?”

Jack nods.

“No coffee today.”

“Why?” He’d be embarrassed at his voice breaking halfway through the word, except he’s still stuck on ‘ _no coffee_ ’ and is he still dreaming? Is this a nightmare? It must be—Ianto did not want to consider Torchwood without caffeine.

He felt a headache coming on.

This had the possibility of being worse than having his arm found out…

(He knew he was being overdramatic, but—but— no coffee? Really?)

“Let’s say we’re trying a health kick.”

“And why wasn’t I consulted on this?” Owen demanded.

“Because I’m the boss and you would’ve said no.”

“Damn right I would have said no. Because this is ridiculous—and what the fuck else is Tea-Boy going to do then, huh?”

Ianto didn’t have the brainpower right then to flinch over that.

He didn’t think he would have, if he did, because he did actually do more than clean up and make coffee, though that was what they saw him to the most of…

But he didn’t react right then because he was thinking the exact same thing.

Later, when he looks back on this, he thinks that maybe spending the whole night worrying over being locked up in the morning, only to have _this_ be the tragedy beginning the day…

Well, it did something weird to his head.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He finds himself gravitating towards the coffee machine more than once, operating on automatic, and some part of him thinks that maybe cutting down on coffee might be good for the team…

He doesn’t know if it’s because the whole team’s apparently going cold turkey, or because of an internal alarm clock, but he hadn’t realized quite how much time he spent making coffee until he was suddenly _not_.

And Jack seemed to always be there to remind him that there’s no coffee today, Ianto, either him or Tosh, and he always ends up wandering away from the kitchen feeling lost…

He gets an astonishing amount of work done, but part of that might be because he’s avoiding the annoyance of a grumpy decaffeinated Owen rather than freed up time.

He’d yawning quite a bit more than he thinks he should be, and after a certain point, his arm tries jerking him into the kitchen. Towards the coffee maker.

He resists.

He can go one day without coffee.

He can.

(but only the one.)

Gwen is there to see it, and she grins tiredly at him.

“I didn’t know you could be so dramatic, Ianto. Though, it’s rather accurate… Owens a close second, but you’re definitely the one who’d need to be wrenched away form the coffee machine.”

Ianto returns the grin, and shakes his head.

“I suppose Coffee has been on my mind a lot lately… though right now it feels a bit like it’s taking over everything… What I would do for an espresso shot right now…”

“You don’t realize what you have ‘til it’s gone,” is Gwen’s piece of fortune-cookie wisdom to impart.

Ianto heads down the stairs, back to his Archives and the resentfully messy paperwork Owen had shoved at him an hour earlier…

He’d taken a doctors chicken scratch to a whole new level.

Neither Gwen nor Ianto noticed the look Jack and Tosh shared at their conversation.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto doesn’t know if he should be relieved or worried when a call comes in for Torchwood…

He decides on worried, in this instance.

He’d be relieved at the distraction the team needed if it weren’t for a gristly murder scene, with ‘TORCHWOOD” written out in blood on the walls.

He’s privately relieved for himself, because while they’re out he has a chance to make himself that espresso shot he so dearly wanted…

He agreed with Jack that they needed to cut down on the amount of coffee the team imbibed on a daily basis, but he disagreed with how he was going about it.

If he didn’t want Owen and Ianto teaming up in the most unlikely of times in a bid for caffeine, he’d allow Ianto this.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Also, by the time the team gets back, the smell of coffee will have dissipated.

He sips, breathing in the roast, and wonders when the last time he’d relaxed like this was.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Compound B-67.

Ret-Con.

When Jack asks him how many people they’ve given amnesia pills to, it’s only because of the caffeine now in his system that he doesn’t get snarky when he replies with “2008.”

Owen’s reaction to the news that each of the people they’ve ret-conned is surprising, as there was no way Jack let Owen grab a coffee while they were out. He sounds the most enthusiastic he’s ever heard him, and that’s including the number of times Owens been caught flirting with girls at bars and on the streets while on the Comm.

Ianto wonders if this is Owen breaking through to the other side of caffeine-depravation.

Is this what’s hiding on the other side of Owen-The-Grump?

It’s an amusing thought.

That the Risen Mitten is brought out again…

That’s less amusing.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

The metal of the glove is uncomfortable to look at.

He checks, and rechecks the cuff of his glove while everyone else is distracted by Jack trying the Mitten, and brings out his pocket watch to time Gwen’s attempt. He’s somehow not surprised she gets it.

Ianto never tried it—wasn’t interested in reminding anyone of the fact, either—but thinks the key to it is empathy.

Suzie, for all that she turned out to be a homicidal maniac in the end, could _feel_ for people. She could really empathize.

Gwen could, too.

“Amazing, she’s a natural… 24 seconds.” It’s impressive.

“Give Ianto a stopwatch and he’s happy.”

Ianto tucks his chin, just a little, and tilts his head.

“It’s the button on the top.” Smirks, at Owen’s snort.

Her next try: 1 minute, 5 seconds.

Very impressive.

He remembers to write it down, as no one else seems to be able to get past the fact that Suzie is apparently connected to a serial killer.

Ianto’s surprised to hear her name, but he’s less surprised at the connection.

He’d been the one to throw out the few Pilgrim flyers she had scattered about, and if this guy hadn’t mentioned her Ianto would have been the one to bring it up.

He would have been the one to bring _her_ up.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Gwen’s the one who literally brings Suzie up.

Like a Zombie.

He’s morbidly fascinated by the whole process…

He wonders how Jack’s reacting to this.

He’s been with Torchwood longer than anyone—longest surviving member, if he was remembering correctly… he was around before Tosh and Owen, so…

He did a bit of mental math.

Yup.

Longer than 6 years. Likely longer than 7.

He made another mental note to find the paper records of Jack’s time with Torchwood, later.

(He very seriously didn’t think on the fact that Ianto was the second longest surviving member, currently. He was just finishing his fourth year)

But Jack had likely seen more than any one of them could imagine, and though Ianto couldn’t think on an event where zombies were brought into the equation, it was still a possibility.

Still.

It’s a bit of a let down.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Suzie is sullen.

Sullen Suzie.

Sullen Suzie was brought back with the Risen Mitten and the Life Knife, and Ianto really should work on his rhyming and alliteration and assonance, because apparently no one else in Torchwood could make up names for obscure alien artifacts.

He hoped they didn’t find anything else that brought people back to (un)life, because he doesn’t think he can figure out many more names without repeating himself in on way or another.

But Suzie is sullen, and pouty, and petulant, and self-pitying…

And he can understand getting into the mindset, because, to be fair, she _is_ dead…

But Ianto’s getting really tired of her shit.

She doesn’t even say ‘hi’ to him.

Ianto sighs, and wishes for a coffee.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Jack says no at the same time Tosh does. They seem to realize their mistake, and look at Ianto, wide eyed and, on Tosh’s part, slightly guilty.

Owen looks at them both, and turns to look at Ianto.

“Is this because of you? Are they banning coffee because of you?”

Ianto frowns at Owen before turning his gaze to Tosh and Jack.

“Is… there a reason you’re so against _me_ making coffee?”

It seems oddly specific.

A sudden thought.

Oh gods. They think he’s going to, to poison them, or something. They think he’s going to do something to the coffee.

He feels vaguely insulted.

And also confused.

How does having a cybernetic arm translate to ‘I’m going to kill you by putting something in your drink’, rather than ‘DELETE, DELETE’?

Jack only hesitates a moment before answering.

“No. No reason. Just no coffee today Ianto.”

He wonders what, exactly, Tosh told Jack.

He wonders what it could be to make Jack lie so badly.

He wonders what is calling his coffee making skills into question.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

The base is locked down, all power down, and things are all going to shit—

Why did they leave heart-on-her-sleeve-Gwen alone with the pity party that is Suzie Costello?

—And he could really use a drink.

Preferably alcoholic, but barring that it was looking like a long night.

Ianto thinks, screw it, and heads to the kitchen.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Tosh, Owen, and Jack all look grateful for the coffee, and down half of it in one go.

Ianto sips at his, sets it down, and goes to set up the water tower as a relay.

He allows himself to enjoy the shocked look Jack gives him when he says he’s got a signal, and feels a small curl of pleasure at the grin Jack gives him.

_Clever._

“Nice Work Ianto… But who do we—hang on. How did you make coffee? And _why_ did you make coffee? You aren’t allowed—no, wait, I’m more interested in how. We don’t have power! How did you make coffee Ianto?”

He shrugged.

“The coffee machine is always on. Even when we turn off power for updates and repairs… I always supposed that there was a back-up energy source somewhere inside of it.”

He doesn’t know what’s happening to Jack’s expression, but he doesn’t look nearly as pleased.

Tosh looks worried, and keeps darting nervous glances towards the kitchen, and back to Jack.

Ianto wonders what he did wrong.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Calling up the Police Force is professionally embarrassing, but not as bad as it could be.

Yes, the DI on the phone makes Jack admit to the whole Unit that they’re trapped in their own base, but comparatively speaking, it’s not as bad as it could be.

At least there’s no Cybermen.

At least there’s no Daleks.

At least there’s no—oh, wait, there is _one_ zombie wandering about, so he supposed that argument is invalid in this situation.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Jack and Owen go after Suzie while Ianto and Tosh hold down the fort.

He wants to ask Tosh what the hell was going on with her and jack, wants to ask what she heard, wants to ask what the hell was going on in general, but any time he broaches the subject she changes the subject.

Brings up yet another thing that needs to be done.

He wonders if it’s actually evasion tactics for a moment, as each thing actually needs doing, at least until he realizes that Tosh is stalling as much as possible, extending each _thing that needs to be done_ , and getting him to do things that she could do in a quarter of the time.

It’s frustrating.

But he can’t feel too sore about it, not with how guilty and regretful Tosh was looking.

Ianto sighs.

Fine.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Tosh is the one to shoot the Risen Mitten, but Ianto’s the one who tosses her the gun.

If this were a sport, he’d call it an assist.

As it wasn’t, he instead classifies it as story of his life, and moves on.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He’s exhausted, and wondering if he can put off finishing the paperwork on Suzie for later when Jack comes into the morgue. And there’s the reason he can’t.

“Thanks for doing this,” he says, like Ianto was going to make him fill out the paperwork on Suzie being dead—again.

Though he tried to hide it, Jack was a bit of a romantic over things… Even if she was crazy and delusional, she was still at one point part of Jacks team. Still at one point his responsibility, and he’d be feeling it. Still. Again.

He’d be feeling it.

So instead Ianto’s here.

“It’s part of my job, Sir.”

“No. I should be doing it, but…” He turns to lean against one of the closed doors, and sighs. It’s long, drawn out, and Ianto wants to mention that he would’t be feelin this tired if he hadn’t outlawed coffee for the day, but thinks better of it for a number of reasons.

(One of which is the worry that Jack might carry the no-coffee rule over to tomorrow if he mentions it)

“One day we’re going to run out of space.”

Depressing thought.

He feels his thoughts turn dark… he wonders what happened to Lisa’s ashes.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Depleted Levels Of Serotonin._

_Noradrenalin Levels At 68%_

_Adrenaline Levels At 53%_

_Calculating…_

_Calculating Levels Of Testosterone…_

_Calculation Complete._

_Solution Found._

_Implementing Solution._

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He feels his sleeve shift, pen dropped onto his clipboard, and saw that his arm had moved to clasp at Jacks arm.

Jack seems as surprised to see it there as Ianto is.

He also seems less embarrassed over it.

Ianto’s hand moves slightly, and he realizes with some horror that his cybernetic arm is caressing Jack Harkness’s arm.

His cybernetic arm is making him grope his boss.

And his boss seems fine with it.

Surprised, but fine with it.

Oh god.

He scrambles for something to say. But _what the hell could he say?_ He feels a weight in his pocket.

“If— If you’re interested, I’ve still got that stopwatch.”

Oh god, where the hell can he go with this?

Jack looked confused, and Ianto could just about read his thoughts.

_Nice touching, and now stopwatches? Where is this going?_

Ianto wishes he could answer, but he had no fucking clue, and felt like he was two minutes away from a panic attack.

“... So?” _Where are you going with this Ianto? Sex?_

_Oh gods, he didn’t know._

“Well, think about it… lots of things you can do with a stopwatch.” Like tell the time. And… time things. And figure out exactly how much time he’s been scrambling at this conversation. And… well. You can also just listen t it tick. Where to go from here?

“Oh yeah… hah I can think of a few.”

Oh, fuck, Jack thinks he’s hitting on him. This is the most awkward, embarrassing conversation they’ve ever had and—wait, did Jack really think Ianto’s attempt at flirting would be this awkward? He’s insulted.

He’d done a much better job of it when he was trying to get into Torchwood after Canary Warf.

So he lets a small, welcoming grin slide onto his face. He can do better than that.

The smile turns flirty.

“It’s quite a list.” He can think of maybe two, three things.

Fuck, couldn’t he have grasped onto something else to distract Jack with?

But Jack grins, eyes crinkling.

It’s abrupt; the way Jack’s attractiveness hits Ianto. He’s noticed it before, sure, had noticed when they were catching Myfanwy how god he smelled, and could vaguely remember the warmth of Jack’s body both above and below his own…

Suddenly, this doesn’t seem like such a bad situation.

There’s certainly not going to be any clothing removal, but…

“I’ll send the others home early. I’ll see you in my office in… ten.”

He smiles, a bit eager, and a bit amused at himself when he pulls his pocket watch free and flicks it open.

“That’s ten minutes…” he starts the watch to ticking. “…And counting.”

He wants to die he feels so embarrassed… but he can’t say he’s not looking forward to meeting up with Jack.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Calibrating…_

_Data On Sexual Intercourse Extrapolating…_

_Calibration Complete._

_Saving Base Functions._

_Complete._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bwahaha, they don’t know yet :D  
> Thanks everyone for being so supportive, and don’t forget to check out the Intermission I posted! If this is Ao3 it should be in the series (CYBER), and if this is ffn dot net, the story is called Cyborg.   
> It’s not as Ianto-centric, but I enjoy it :D  
> Oh, and excitement for RandomPersonOfDoom, because she’s posting chapter 4 of her podfic for my story And I Wake Up (Complete)…   
> I AM JUST SO EXCITED! Insane!Ianto will drive me crazy :D


	5. Janet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What goes on at Weevil Fight Club, stays in Weevil Fight Club.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank ToonyTwilight for giving me the phrase ‘Cyber-Wingman of Love’ from reading the last chapter, because omfg that is amazing.  
> Also, you’ll notice that I’m actually changing up canon a bit in this chapter, so to those of you who’ve been enjoying that everything is mostly canon… well. Sorry!  
> Hope you still enjoy!

 

Having sex with a man is different than Ianto expected. Sure, he’d experimented in Uni, but he’d never gone farther than heavy petting and frottage…

Having sex with Jack… well, he can’t say he’d pondered over it much in his free time, but it’s… Well, it’s certainly something.

He… well, he was feeling a little blown over.

He hadn’t known what he was going to do when he finally made his way up to Jack’s office, hadn’t known how he would be able to avoid discovery…

Turns out he hadn’t really needed a plan.

Thank the gods for Jack’s suit fetish.

His trousers might need extra dry-cleaning from where they’d been pooling around his ankles, and from the various fluids at the end of the night, and he had two straight-edged bruises on the tops of his thighs (and on his hips, and on his arse, and on his back, from when they’d switched positions) from Jack’s desk, but he’d come (ha) away with his secret intact.

Nervous energy carried him home, and he had the vague thought that he might have some form of a discovery kink, the mutated sibling of some other kink, maybe exhibitionism, because he didn’t think he’d ever come so hard without being excessively fondled before.

Or, it could be Jack…

Ianto didn’t know.

He half looked forward to finding out.

Jack’s eyes burn a hole in his shoulders when he’s leaving the base, and Ianto can’t even feel embarrassed that he can also practically feel him staring at his arse, because before he’d left he’d gotten Jack to repeal the ban on coffee.

It’s a good feeling.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Later, much, much later, after their visitors from the 1950’s, after another few nights of frottage and heavy petting with Jack, Ianto finds himself in a bar.

Wonder of all wonders, he’s there because of Owen.

Further, he’s there because he’s _worried_ over Owen.

(And that _is_ a surprise.)

As much as Ianto’d like to see Owen and Tosh just get together already (more for Tosh’s sake than Owen’s), it’s obvious to him that Diane Holmes had been someone different to Owen.

Though they’d been together a short amount of time, Ianto thought that perhaps Diane was to Owen something like what Lisa had been to Ianto…

Well, something similar in any case.

(He’d never say it aloud, but he thought Owen’s Fiancée was the closest thing to Ianto’s Lisa Owen was likely to have… until he pulled his head from his arse and saw Tosh for the amazing woman she was)

But it’s worry for Owen tat has Ianto at the bar, and it’s worry for Owen (and the lingering thoughts of Jack) that has him interrupting the oncoming bar fight the way he does.

“Hullo,” he says, sliding beside Owen, an arm at his shoulder. It’s vaguely flirty in the hope that perhaps playing gay would get them out of this situation, though Ianto can recognize Young And Stupid when he sees it. He’s angled himself to be mostly in the way of the bloke, and deliberately smiles at the bartender.

If not playing gay, then at least redirecting anger. Dividing it.

 _Really_ , he thinks, looking at how irritated she’s looking at her boyfriend, if he’s worried about her leaving him for a bloke she meets at her workplace, this is not the way to go about keeping her.

“Oy, this has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, I’m sure it does.” Owen elbows his side, making a face, _bugger off,_ and Ianto knees him lightly in the thigh. _Shut up, I’m helping._

“It really can’t. Now, unless you’re gonna try an’ get a go at my girlfriend—”

“Hey!” Girlfriend isn’t looking much happier.

“It’s not like that. We were having a _conversation_. One day when you’ve grown up, you’ll see that that’s what human beings _do_ —and for _god’s sake_ , Ianto, get your—”

Ianto doesn’t see the fist coming, but he still ends up twisting to catch it in the palm of his right hand.

Always his right hand.

He feels like he’s getting lazy, in regards to self protection.

The other man—Tommy, apparently—cusses and tries to pull his hand back. Ianto holds firm.

And here’s where things get messy.

Tommy pulls back for a swing with his free hand, and Owen reacts by side stepping and moving around to clasp his arm.

At the same time, Ianto twists the hand in his grip, causing Tommy’s fist to falter, making him turn to relieve the pressure on his wrist, and—

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

“The fuck d’you do that for?”

Owen is prodding lightly at the bruise blooming high on his cheekbone, and Ianto makes sure to have an appropriately apologetic look on his face when he turns to glare at him.

He shrugs slightly, and tilts his head.

“You’re still dealing with Diane. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

Owen scowls. He doesn’t ask how Ianto knows, which is good, because he should know by now. Ianto knows about everything going on in the Hub…

(So long as it wasn’t Tosh wielding a telepathic necklace.)

Ianto rolls his eyes. Yes, he knows how cheesy it sounds. Or, not cheesy, but so very _cliché_.

“No, I _know_ you want to be alone, and in a moment I’ll be leaving you to that, but…” he searched for the right words to say. He didn’t really talk to Owen outside of trading insults and sarcastic remarks, so he wasn’t quite sure how to get things across to him.

“Alright, look, Diane wasn’t here for very long, so—”

“Fuck off Tea Boy. Just because she was only here for— _mmphuck_?”

Owen wrenched himself away from Ianto, and he’s not even sorry that his hand had reached out to cover his mouth.

(Slightly alarmed, as ever, when his arm does things without his input, particularly things like this, but…)

“You done? Great. As I was saying, I know she wasn’t around for that long, but you still cared, and I know it’s hard to, to cope, when someone you care about might be in danger. In fact, is most likely in danger, if we’re honest.”

“Oh, _thanks_ Ianto, that’s making me feel a _lot_ better about all this, _so glad_ we had this talk.” Owen shook his head and turned to stalk off.

Ianto tugged Owens sleeve, spinning him back around to face him.

“For fuck’s sakes Owen, I just want to make sure you won’t be an idiot about this.”

“Right, like you’re an expert.”

“I am, actually, thanks.” Ianto raised his eyebrows, and resisted the urge to smack some sense into Owen’s damn, obstinate head. “Remember me? Cyber girlfriend? Any of this ringing any bells?” He ignored Owen’s half-hearted attempt to tug away, and pulled him closer to the mouth of the alleyway.

“Look, I don’t care if you’re planning on moping about longer than you already are… I’m just here to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.”

“Like what? Get into a bar fight?”

“Like try to bring her back on a conversion unit.”

Owen was silent.

Ianto inclined his head.

“To be fair, it’s not likely to happen in this instance. However there are other stupid things to do that work with this situation…” Ianto searched for what he could, conceivably, do, and hoped he wasn’t actually giving the other man ideas, “like maybe try and go after her into the Rift and end up who knows where, or maybe opening up the Rift here, in Cardiff, and letting who knows what free _here_ …” That got a bark of a laugh from Owen, and Ianto thought it was the first halfway honest laugh he’d heard from Owen since Diane Holmes flew out of his life.

Flew out of Wales. Off to… wherever the Rift drops her off, which, in all likelihood, will be the place she dies.

Best not mention that to Owen.

(he likely thought of it himself, already.)

Ianto gives him a wry grin, and hopes that he’s gotten his point across.

He didn’t think he could come up with many more ridiculously fatal ideas to get Holmes back without at least one sounding possible.

“Now I’m going home, and if you want you can go find yourself another bar fight… but it might actually be a bit more useful if you signed up for boxing lessons instead. Or a gym membership.”

“Hmph, like I’d have the time…”

“No, but still more useful than getting soused and bloody-knuckled over a girl you weren’t even flirting with.”

“Kid was a brat,” Owen sniffs, looking out into the street. “Doesn’t deserve his girlfriend if he’s going to be a prat over her even talking to other blokes.”

“He’s also, as you already pointed out, a kid, and is doing a good enough job on his own showing his girlfriend all the reasons not to stay with him without your help.”

He pulls his stopwatch out, ignoring the scoff it gets from Owen, and makes a decision.

“If you want, I have beers at my place…”

“Look, Tea Boy, I’m not interested in blokes…”Owen cuts in, and Ianto returns the favor, making a face.

“What? No, no. I’m offering alcohol and movies, not…” He can’t even say it. “Not, no. Just—no. I have a couch, if you need it. But no. ”

Owen looks at him a moment, blinks and looks down the street.

“…Fine.”

This is either a very bad idea, or—

No. No. This is just a very bad idea. Just a very, very bad idea.

Ianto leads the way to his place anyway.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

One thing Ianto noticed right after Canary Warf is that, aside from the dress shirts for his suits, he doesn’t have any long sleeved shirts.

He hadn’t thought about it before, but he did wear t-shirts and vests when he wasn’t dressed for work. Wore jackets and sweat shirts over top, mostly open at the front.

After Canary Warf, it’s the first thing for himself he buys, even before stocking his new apartment in Cardiff with food.

He buys long-sleeved shirts, ones with collars with no chance of slipping or sliding to the side even the slightest bit. He gets himself sweat shirts that don’t open in the front, gets hoodies and soft woolen jumpers that didn’t chafe at his still-tender shoulder, and learns to layer with the intent to cover.

If Owen thinks it’s strange that he wears his gloves in the comfort of his own home, he doesn’t comment on it.

Ianto thinks it’s just because Ianto just always wears his gloves, it’s become part of his _image_.

Ianto Jones; Suits; Archives; Tea Boy; Gloves.

Things that made up his whole.

Ianto nurses at one beer while Owen goes through his entire case; watches as he moves onto his liquor cabinet. They watch Bond Films until they get into an argument on who was the best Bond, and then they move onto Monty Python, anything more complex than that too much for Owen’s alcohol ridden brain.

Owen’s still a prat, is a much more pleasant drunk than Ianto could have imagined, and is just as horrible with a hangover freshly woken up as he is when he brings all that grumpiness to work.

Ianto can’t find it in him to regret inviting him over, even when he gets weird looks from Tosh and Jack when they walk in together.

The mottled mess of a bruise on the side of Owen’s face gets a wince-and-grin from everyone though.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto wants to know why anyone would want to steal Weevils.

He knows he’s been spending too much time with Jack after-hours when the first thing to come to mind is a possible fetish society.

His second thought, the much more likely idea, is perhaps a group of people making up their own… sort-of Torchwood.

You know, Catch the aliens, keep them from stacking the populace…

Only, they’d likely be more like Torchwood One, because he can’t imagine them getting very far after catching the weevils, and can only picture experimenting and point-blank killing after the search-and-capture part of this hypothetical new group.

So he checks out the local hospital records.

A surge of unusual injuries.

Huh.

He doesn’t know if he should be relieved or not, but he can at least be thankful that it’s not likely there’s another Torchwood One around.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Jack finds him after hours in the Archives, and Ianto didn’t expect a change in attitude from Jack after they shagged, and for the most part it’s true.

(except for the shagging part. That still happens, and it’s certainly different.)

Jack doesn’t treat him any differently, doesn’t give him any sort of preferential treatment, and Ianto is ok with that.

He’s slightly less okay that Jack’s heated looks now have a bit more intimate knowledge behind them, and is surprisingly very okay with the increase in casual and not-so-casual touches he gets now.

He might be imagining it, too, but Jack’s gaze is a bit warmer, more affectionate, he could say, when he looks at Ianto, and this is actually a surprise.

He’d thought that, because the entirety of their… whatever you wanted to call it, was just about entirely clothed.

Well. On Ianto’s part at least.

And Ianto didn’t ever stay the night.

Never took off his shirt.

Never even took off his gloves.

This was all due to paranoia and secrecy on Ianto’s part, and he does feel guilt about having sex with Jack with this secret still between them… feels selfish, because when it comes out he knows Jack will place even more blame on himself for not seeing it.

But he enjoys being with Jack.

And, even with Ianto being somewhat distant, seemingly bashful at times when it’s a moot point, Jack seems to be enjoying it as well.

Even when they aren’t fucking.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Tosh and Owen are out with Jack, Tosh in the van making sure they’re staying on target with her computer programs, and Ianto hears everything on the comms. Jack’s conversation with the voice-modulated Unidentified Other on  the phone is recorded, and he sets the program to write out the conversation going, prints it out, and files it away.

He shakes his head.

Don’t goad the Mysterious Figures, Jack.

Or, he thinks, at least do it in a way that gets more information.

When Jack calls from an unknown number, Ianto is already tracing each and every call that’s been made to and from it from the past month before Jack can even ask. He can hear Owen cussing in the background, presumably checking over the body left for them.

He’s glad Owen has something else to focus on, here. He can’t imagine what he’d be doing if he were still self-destructively moping about.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto is the one to go with Gwen to break the news to the man’s family about his death, because he knows she’s had to do this before.

Ianto has always been on the cleaning up side of things; making bodies disappear, putting people, thoughts, notes, anything really, just… moving them. Just out of sight. Out of mind.

And then he makes sure to move them even farther away, makes sure everything’s all cleaned up.

He’s never had to talk to someone face-to-face to tell them that their spouse/parent/sibling/offspring had died, but he knows from Gwen’s files as a Constable that she’s had to.

Knows it, and figures he might be a bit more of a comfort than Jack or Owen might be in this. Tosh might be better, but she was following a lead elsewhere.

When she asks, somewhat rhetorically, what the wife and children were going to do now, he doesn’t even think before he replies.

“They'll learn to cope—or they won’t. Either way, they'll have to move forward at some point.” At the look she gives him for that, his mouth twitches. “Well, you can only stay still for so long before you go ‘round the bend.”

It’s a quiet drive back, and Ianto thinks maybe next time he should be the on to tell the family.

Gwen may be more used to doling out the news, but it was obvious she—well.

Disliking the job was putting it mildly.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Ianto thinks that if Owen had instead been going off moping, he’d likely be in Ianto’s place right then.

He thinks of this possibility fondly, running his white-gloved hand down the front of his slightly dressed-down suit.

But as it is, Gwen and Tosh would be seen through CCTV, Owen and Jack were both in the warehouse, and Ianto had been the only one to stay at the base, and so was the only one whose face wasn’t associated with Torchwood…

And so Ianto Jones is going into Property.

The gloves feel strange on his hands, so used to his black leather ones now, and it would probably be best to do without them altogether… except that’s not an option for him.

He sighs.

This is worse than having a tattoo you want to hide to get past a job interview.

“Mr. Jones?”

Ianto makes sure he looks the very picture of competence (not a hard thing to do), and does his best to look like he was used to being in charge… in a less servile manner.

Mark Lynch only hesitates half a moment when he sees Ianto’s gloves, only the slightest of gestures giving away his surprise, and Ianto can’t quite get a gauge on how this meeting will go from the handshake. He can’t feel a thing through the metal, and he can’t look and try to guess at the pressure the other man is giving the handshake and hold eye contact for the appropriate amount of time.

Ianto was head Archivist, and kept Torchwood Three running, but at times it was patently obvious that he was Part Archivist and part Butler when he wasn’t being the behind-the-scenes second in command, communications wise.

He uses the skills he’s had to develop as the main link for Torchwood to the outside world now, and he thinks he does rather well pitching _Jellied Eels_ to Mark Lynch, considering.

Jellied Eels.

_Ugh._

Way to go, Tosh. Way to go.

He spins some small yarn about having moved from Cardiff when he was a child, and was now hoping to make his way back into the area and maybe reconnect with some ‘lost family’… thinks that if it were anyone else save Gwen, they would have had an easier time pulling this off, accent wise.

He almost misses the sidelong glance Lynch gives him, but he recognizes it, and wants to groan.

Would he never be free of a work environment where he’s ogled on a regular basis?

The sheets he’s given on the properties are all shit, he knows from their addresses—he’d done his research before heading out.

So he asks about the warehouse in the Q Section he’d seen an ad for, making it obvious even without directly saying so that he would be interested in paying more than what anyone else _might_ have offered on the property.

When he’s told that the property is pretty much signed and sealed, he doesn’t let his disbelief reach his face.

He doesn’t need Tosh’s voice in his ear to tell him that the place was only put up a week ago.

He doesn’t know where the conversation turns, but Ianto’s being asked out to drinks, and it’d be a fairly understandable thing, except for how he phrased it.

Ianto sighs inwardly and resigns himself to the fact that he’s going to have to deal with the flirting one way or the other.

When he leaves, offer for drinks turned down, as well as the offer of ‘putting in a good word’, he’s thankful that the website he and Tosh had put together would be doing most of the work for him next.

He gets back to the Hub just in time to hear Tosh answer under her alias, and ignores the smirks Owen and Jack give him.

“What,” Owen says, “you didn’t give him your number?”

Ianto wonders why he’d ever been worried about Owen Harper, and starts up the coffee machine.

Owen gets decaf.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Instead of using Janet the Weevil

(and honestly, _this_ is why Jack didn’t get to name Myfanwy)

as bait, Ianto is with Mark Lynch.

Seeing a hanging punching bag, Ianto absently swings at it, wincing when it swings much more than it should.

Should have used his left.

“So,” he hears behind him, “What’s your outlet?”

He’s curious until he turns around, and Mark Lynch is fit, sure, but really?

He plays dumb to be safe.  
“… for what?”

“Your anger.” Lynch is cocky, in the way he hold himself, in how he’s just about strutting in showing off his muscle, the V of his hips, and he laughs like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Who says I’m angry?” Annoyed, sure… exasperated, certainly, but anger? He didn’t think he had the energy to be angry.

Lynch scoffs. Or, he supposes, Mark, because if they aren’t on a first name basis yet then he’d have to be uncomfortable with the fact that Mark seems fine with just hanging out with his shirt open.

For fuck’s sakes, this guy is worse than Jack. 

“Oh, c’mon, I can’t tell if you’re more angry or afraid of the world. You look like you’re at the top of your game, and I’ll bet anything you clawed your way up just to get a better vantage point. _And_ ,” he adds, “You’re not even living it at _the_ top of the game yet, and you’ve got people after you!”

Ianto doesn’t wince, because seeing Tommy-From-The-Bar at another bar had been unexpected. His nose was still ruddy and bruises had turns his jawline green, and he’d very much so recognized Ianto when he’d seen him.

Ianto had had a moment of panic, of _oh fuck this’ll blow everything to pieces_ , but Mark had thrown himself into the fight without any sort of hesitation.

Ianto raises an eyebrow, and tilts his head minutely.

“Look, I’m not criticizing… but you aren’t the only angry man in the world, not even close, you fancy a beer?”

A change in topic and direction to get him off balance, along with a line that encourages similarities… Ianto wants to know where in the conversation Marks trying to lead Ianto to.

He wonders where he’s going with this.

He takes the beer when offered.

“You work your arse off, get a house, a car, a big plasma screen… you end up with a workforce… people there, specifically to look after your every need, your every whim, you’re officially successful, and what does it bring?”

Ianto stays silent, sips his beer, and thinks that he’s the _people_ , the _workforce_ , and he does a bloody well good job of it. He makes things run _flawlessly_.

“Nothing. Success is of no worth in and of itself.” Ianto raises his eyebrow and glances around the spacious kitchen. Right.

“No, seriously. I could do without all this stuff. It doesn’t define me… yes, it does make things easier,” he admits under the look Ianto gives him, “but the thing is I don’t need it… there’s just so much more. And it’s closer than you think.”

Ianto gives him a contemplative look, and wonders why people seem to find it so easy to just talk _at_ him all the time.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He wishes he’d just let Mark talk at him some more, rather than getting the brilliant idea to break into the locked room in his house…

And he might not like Weevils all that much, but it’s not a good feeling, seeing Mark Lynch beat away at the one he’s got locked up.

And Lynch knows Ianto’s part of Torchwood, or at least that he’s with ‘the bloke in the big coat,’ and the ‘cute little Asian girl’… and Ianto may have tossed the still useless gun he’d kept on his belt, but he still had his Taser at his armpit.

And now Mark was bringing him to see whatever the fuck was happening.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Weevil Fight Club.

It’s Weevil fucking Fight Club, for the rich and idle and _stupid_.

Ianto can’t even comprehend how someone could even think of something like this—

Oh, we found mutant alien things that attack and have fangs and claws and are much stronger than us… oh, I know! How about we start up a fight club where we beat up on each other and then try our hand at beating at these dangerous creatures!

Yeah.

Great idea.

Lynch catches up to him when he turns away from the little bit of insanity  set out on display.

“How long are we going to play this game, Ianto. You lie, bullshit, _sweet talk_ …. But you are hiding. Ianto, you are _hiding_.”

He can’t help himself.

He has to laugh.  

The sound fairly explodes from his chest, feels like a punch to his diaphragm, because _no shit Sherlock_.

He’s been hiding for months, for nearly a _whole fucking year_ , and what? Lynch thinks that _Weevil Fight Club_ will get him to stop hiding?

“You have _no_ idea,” he gets out between laughs, and can’t stop the low chuckles even when Lynch pulls a gun on him.

Not _his_ gun, which was still somewhere in the guys apartment, so bully for him for getting a _working_ gun, but that doesn’t really matter.

“Get into the cage.”

He grins when he puts his hands up, palm out, and sniggers when he says, “I’m unarmed.”

There are a limited number of hand/arm jokes once can use without being too obvious, but so far the few times he’s gotten to use them have each been as equally funny.

Ianto Jones is hilarious, even if only secretly. Mostly secretly.

“That being said… lower the gun, and _then_ I’ll get into the cage.”

Lynch cocks it.

Ianto walks forward, slow, and brings his hands down to his sides.

Stops just short of bumping into the barrel.

It lowers.

“Good Boy,” he mocks, parody of what Lynch had said to him hardly an hour earlier, and walks past him.

This was a horrible idea, but he’d lifted one of the other blokes’ phones off of him and sent the address and ‘ _weevil fight club_ ’ to Jack, Gwen, Owen, and Tosh’s numbers, so they’d likely be there in short time.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He doesn’t pay attention to the sort-of tips Lynch is giving out on the walk over, only tries his best to stop giggling before he gets into the ring.

“Yes, yes, darkness and souls and hiding things and would you just open the door already?”

Lynch gives him a put upon frown, and Ianto mockingly pats his cheek with leather-clad hands.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to look into its eyes and laugh or anything. Wouldn’t want to make this whole thing any more of a joke than it is.”

The cage is opened.

Ianto steps through, and takes in the ripped up but still recognizable coveralls, and grins.

“Hello Janet.”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

Gunshots go off, and Ianto can’t even be surprised that it’s Jack.

Janet, who had been keeping a steady distance from Ianto before that, jumped forward, and his arm immediately moved forward.

His Left arm, because his Right was going around the mouth, around to the scruff of the Weevil’s neck, and grabbing a handful of skin and pulling.

Janet yowled, teeth releasing the flesh of his arm—

Another set of scars to add to his collection, he supposes

—and Ianto moves to the side so he can shove her past him, turning to slam a fist down on the back of her neck.

She goes down, stunned, and when Gwen manages to get the cage door open he gets the hell out of there.

Gets out, and grabs the idiot who’d moved to go in with one of their Taser sticks.

When he resists, Ianto remembers that he has his own Taser, and uses it. What a thing to forget about. _Really_. He could smack himself. 

Owen smacks the back of his head instead, _ow_ , and grabs his hand,

Thankfully his left, though _ow, again_

pulling it closer to inspect the spreading red spot in his most-likely ruined jacket.

“Fuckin’ idiots, the lot of them,” he mutters, glaring at the assembled men. Ianto nods agreement.

Owen looks up from picking wool fiber from the bite, and glares at him.

“You too, you tosser. _Wee evil might club?_ ”

Ianto stares at him, uncomprehending, before he realizes what he’s talking about.

He shrugs. “Autocorrect.”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder, I posted a side story for this, for the episode ‘Random Shoes’ if you’re interested :D It’s called Cyborg.  
> And how did you like this then? Too much of a change?  
> I don’t think I’ve read a story yet that does Ianto fighting in the ring instead of Owen, so, huzzah for that…  
> One thing I would like to make mention of, because my sister mentioned it, I realize that I’ve made Ianto a bit more, hmm, touchy feely than he is usually portrayed. My reasoning for this is because this is Ianto’s way of rebelling against the Cybernetics. Cybermen ‘delete’ emotions after/during conversion, so, consciously or not, Ianto is making sure to care.  
> Even if that caring, in this case, is for Owen.


	6. Ianto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That thing. You know. The thing.   
> The one you know will be happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So…   
> I’ve got a couple of people being like “omg Doodle, srsly, just have them find out already,” and those who are readers of my S3, CoE fix-it will know that demands like that have no effect on me. “C’MON, LET THEM BE REUNITED ALREADY!” is a thing I’ve heard multiple times, in various ways, in various tones ranging between wheedling and demanding, and yet here we are…. 110k later… :D  
> (Well, not HERE, but in T3W, and… yeah.)  
> Also I plan to write a sequel to this, for S2, and maybe even S3, though that depends (TOO MANY FIX-ITS maybe), but this is me saying that those of you who don’t know what else I can write for this storyline after Ianto’s arm has been found out… you lack imagination. THIS IS AN AU! There is so much that can happen with a metal armed (ha for double meanings if not entendres) Ianto!  
> But for now, the next chapter!  
> ENJOY! This is probably the lengthiest chapter I’ve done, as in it’s about 13 pages… but with reason. So yeah. ENJOY!

Chapter 6—Ianto

 

With Weevil Fight Club, and healing, and having Owen crabbily fussing over him, Ianto almost forgets about Jack and Tosh’s weirdness.

He shouldn’t have, especially since looking back at things shows that Gwen _certainly_ hadn’t missed being out of the loop, _especially_ since the last time he’d left a worry alone it had turned into this problem to begin with…

So he really has no one to blame but himself for what happens next.

That didn’t mean he didn’t stare accusingly at Jack and Tosh, confused and hurt and irritated as they lay what felt like his heart and soul out in front of him. Broken. Bleeding.

Metaphorically.

~~(If they’d left stains everywhere for him to clean up, on top of _this_ …)~~

Well—they didn’t lay it out in front of him, specifically, but that’s what it feels like when he comes into the kitchen to find that they’ve dismantled the coffee machine.

_Why would they do such a thing?_

He looks at the pieces, all laid out neatly and with a sort of order he can understand, and purses his lips.

Looks up at Jack, who’s holding something in his hand, and at Tosh, who is at least looking a bit apologetic about what she’s done.

_Sacrilege._

_They’ve killed the Coffee Machine._

He wants to wave his finger at them, to rub their noses in the parts like you do with a naughty puppy, _look at what you did_ , but he can’t make himself move from the doorway.

Can only give them a hurt, _betrayed_ look.

“You broke the coffee machine.” He says, because Jack is giving him his almost patented _It Had To Be Done_ look, and Tosh is silent but looking much too pleased with herself.

Decaf, he decides, for at least a month, and _ouch_ , it hurts again because he doesn’t know how long it’ll be before he can get the coffee machine up and running again.

Because they killed the Coffee Machine.

He’s not too busy trying to wrap his mind around what sort of logic must’ve been needed for such a thing to seem like a good idea that he doesn’t notice that Jack and Tosh are still saying nothing. He can hear the door to the Hub open, Owen or Gwen coming in to work, but he has no thoughts for them now.

Because they killed the coffee machine.

“You took it apart. _Why_?” he asks, demands, _pleads_ , because he can _not_ see how taking apart the coffee machine accomplishes _anything_. Nothing good will come of this.

“Because of _this_.”

Jack opens his hand, and there, in his palm, is a white-grey stone. It was jagged, and porous, and Ianto couldn’t believe it.

He feels like some part of his brain dies, just to escape the madness.

“You took apart my coffee machine for _that_? For a _moon rock_?” Ianto enunciates clearly, so there’s no more miscommunication, because obviously he’d missed some sort of memo, somewhere _. This should not be possible_ , he thinks, _because **I’m the one who makes the memos**. _

“No, see, Ianto, it’s a moon—wait, you know about it?” She looks confused, but the part of his brain that died was also the part that made him care about not confusing his coworkers.

“You knew about this?” Jack was frowning, now, and Ianto pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Yes, because _I was the one who put it there_. I talked to you about this, Jack, _months_ ago.”

Ianto had, too, and he could see Jack remembering the day even as he opened his mouth to deny it.

He’d asked about if there was anything toxic, or possibly harmful about, around, or that could come from moon rocks, since the Rift had pretty much dumped a load of it in their metaphorical back yard, and Jack had cheerfully told him no.

“Wait, why did you put a moon rock in the coffee machine?”

Ianto spun, and raked fingers through his hair.

He hadn’t ever regretted the need for gloves so much as now, when he couldn’t get a good grip to pull with the leather. Because they killed his coffee machine because of a rock. A rock _he put there_. On _purpose_. And it was just about a physical need to pull at his hair right then

He spins back around to face them, heels of his palms pressing at his eye sockets for a moment.

_“Because the coffee machine runs on rocks.”_

“What?”

“What?” Owen was now behind him, and was jumping between giving him disbelieving looks and alarmed looks at the tragedy of his dismantled coffee machine.

_“What’d you do to the coffee machine!?”_

Ianto put aside the camaraderie he felt towards Owen right then to push forward. He’d gained momentum—Owen would just have to catch up.

_Because they’d killed the coffee machine for a moon rock._

“Did you think I went on hikes because I _liked_ it?” he asks; mind running in two different directions.

One, wondering how they’ve all survived so long with people who did such _stupid_ things, and the other wondering if he’d ever actually stopped to explain how to take care of the coffee machine before…

At once, he abruptly realizes that no, he hasn’t, and also that without knowing the specifics, this isn’t such a stupid thing to do.

Maybe. Sort of.

Kind of.

He sighs, suddenly very tired, and slumps into a chair.

“I suppose I should probably have explained it before…” _you decided to kill the coffee machine_ , he doesn’t finish. Because they shouldn’t have done it in the first place.

He sighs again, and thinks that the worst thing about it all is that he can’t even make himself a coffee to feel better.

Because he’s still annoyed, and feeling spiteful, he says this aloud, and feels a little bit better after hearing the groans from the rest of Torchwood.

If—no, _when_ they got the coffee machine back up and running, he’s putting everyone on decaf until…

Until stupid ideas like _killing the coffee machine_ make them _flinch_.

It’s like reverse clicker training for dogs.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

“…So… the coffee machine really does run on rocks?”

Gwen says this slowly, carefully, like she’s tasting the words on her tongue and isn’t sure if she likes the flavor of them.

Ianto nodded, handing another part to Tosh when she gestured for it, and sighed for what felt like the thousandth time.

“You’ve been feeding us rocks?” Ianto blinks at Owen, and is almost amused at his tone. He sounds like he doesn’t know if he should be fascinated, disgusted, or amused. “Talk about roughage.”

“When did you start using Moon Rocks?”

Ianto leveled Jack with a look.

“About a week after I asked you about them. They last longer than even Gneiss… what? I had to look up the types of rock I could use when I figured out why the coffee machine wasn’t working so well the first time. Gneiss brings about a stronger coffee to even decaf; concrete adds unnecessary sugars…”He takes in the look on everyone’s faces. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not exactly tossing dirt in there. It’s work, getting to the little holding area, and I have to make sure it’s the right size, and it’s much more convenient getting one good, clean, hard rock than having to change it weekly because I chose something… gravelly.”

Jack looks pensive. Weighs the bit of moon rock in his hand. Ianto gives him an unimpressed look.

“…Okay. Ianto, no more Moon Rocks.”

He got up from the table, obviously intent to leave, but Ianto got up and blocked the door.

“No. Jack, I’d like to know… what, _exactly_ ,” he enunciates, because fuck if he’s ever letting this happen again, “prompted you to take the coffee machine apart?”

Jack makes a face and bounces slightly on the balls of his feet.

“… Well—”

“Actually, Ianto… that was me.” Tosh gets up from the table, and he resists the urge to snap at her to go back to the table, to repairing it— _fix what you’ve done, stop using your techno-powers for evil_ —because that was on the wrong side of rude. “Remember… Remember with Mary? And the necklace?” Ianto remembered. “Well, I heard something a bit odd… from the coffee machine. It was like it was sentient—very interested in what we were doing…”

Ianto digested this bit of information. He very carefully didn’t consider the… alternative for what she’d heard. It could have very well been the coffee machine.

 “And why didn’t you come to me about it? I mean, I’m the one who uses it the most…” he thinks on this a moment, and Jack and Tosh share a glance. It was the exact sort of glance they’d been giving each other for months now… Owen and Gwen frown, also wondering, when the start of an idea blooms in Ianto’s mind. “…I’m the _only one_ who uses it, so why…? Wait. You thought—”

“Ianto, it called you _the Provider_. I’m sorry, but—”

“What?? You thought Ianto was—”

“Wait a moment, you thought Tea Boy was being _controlled by the fuckin’ coffee machine?_ ”

“Okay, everyone QUIET DOWN. Yes, we thought Ianto might be being controlled by the _alien_ coffee maker, and _yes_ , because of this we thought it’d be best to keep this from Ianto. _And_ —” he cuts Gwen off before she can open her mouth more than a fraction, “we kept it to Toshiko and I until we could confirm it, because we didn’t need anyone treating Ianto differently. If he had been controlled, it would have given us away, and… As it is, he _isn’t_ being controlled, which is a relief. But… no more moon rocks. Satisfied?”

Ianto moved aside, and sat with Tosh to help her put the coffee machine back together. His mind reeled.

So that was what it would be like to be confronted about being controlled by something…

Well, he just hoped they’d keep this interaction in mind when they found out about his arm.

 _Or_ , he considered, _maybe not_.

Didn’t need Tosh thinking his arm was sentient, after all.

The thought made him uncomfortable.

~~(Because what if it was?)~~

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

The nozzle fell to the table with a metallic clunk, and rolled to the edge.

Tosh caught it before it could fall,

“Ianto?”

and glanced at him, fingers and screwdriver fiddling with the insides of the coffee machine.

He shook his head, a quick jerk, and headed out the door with a mutter about getting coffee—strange, so _very_ strange, to be saying this while leaving the kitchen—and just about ran for the tourist shop.

He didn’t actually run, mind, but he did make it there very quickly.

Out of sight of the rest of the team, he leaned against the wall and gasped.

Gripped at his arm—

Realized how stupid it was for him to do that, even with the _feeling_ —

Gripped his shoulder—

And just waited.

Waited as he felt pins and needles, a ridiculously impossible bone deep ache, and it just didn’t make sense.

He didn’t have an arm.

It was all metal under his suit jacket, all metal except for a stump of bone and slivers of cauterized flesh, and that meant he shouldn’t be feeling like his fingers were going to fall off, numb to the point of pain, _and it shouldn’t_ —

The rest of Torchwood avoided the Tourist shop except for coming and leaving, and even then, most preferred to leave via the invisible lift.

It’s for this reason he felt safe in gripping the fingers of his glove in his teeth and pulling it off, feeling with bare fingers at the metal hidden at his cuff. Because it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t, because his arm wasn’t there, no, there was metal, skin warmed but still cool to the touch, still—still—

Oh.

Through the pain he felt in his nonexistent arm, and the shakes that were overtaking him, Ianto remembered a bit of trivia he’d learned from his childhood…

Phantom pains.

He remembered, there had been a war vet on his street, a curmudgeonly old man who snarled at anyone who let their eyes wander from his face, wander anywhere close to the stump where his leg once was.

It’s with some irony that Ianto thinks on his and Rhiannon’s nickname for him, The Ol’ Pirate. They’d said he was a peg leg and a ship away from being one…

(He was a hook away from it himself…)

But he remembered hearing about the phantom pains.

It was the brain forgetting that there wasn’t a limb there, neurons trying to fire and coming up short, lighting up the nerves instead… remembering pain instead of facing the fact that there wasn’t anything there to command.

He’d thought he’d felt it before, twinges and aches and sharp pains, short bursts of sensation.

Now he supposed he’d been getting the light of it.

The pain was fading, receding like blood returning to a sleepy limb, ~~except there was no limb~~ , and he let go of his metallic wrist long enough to give his shoulder a squeeze. He knew where the ropey scars underneath were from memory even if he couldn’t feel them through three layers of cloth, could only feel the hard line where flesh gave way and metal didn’t… and it could be his imagination but he thought the pain was going away faster.

Mind over matter, perhaps.

It worked both ways here.

He was about to pull his glove back on when the bell above the door chimed. He casually tried to move to close the door to the Hub, slipping the leather back into place, because he should have done that earlier, likelihood of having the rest of Torchwood coming up here being unlikely or not—

When he has to pause.

Three purple-faced men came in, one after the other, their absurdly large shoulders brushing the edges of the doorway, and Ianto could feel his eyebrows rising.

They weren’t out of breath that he could see, but what else could make their faces…

And then he noticed the distinctly alien looking guns they each had in hand, a sort of club held in the other.

 _Ah_ , _aliens_ , he thought, _of course_.

“Did you need—” _something_ , they didn’t let him finish, because the one in front raised his gun and fired. He felt a crackle of electricity in the space between and—

Ianto brought up his hand automatically, and the smell of burning leather filled the air. He shook his hand, could feel something attached to the glove, and when what looked like a bit of fluff fell to the floor, he winced.

Dammit, he had to get new gloves now. Quickly.

There was a hole in the direct center of his palm, leather and thread curling around the edges, ragged, and the three burly purple men had apparently gotten over their surprise at him deflecting their attack, because the one in front raised his gun again.

Ianto again brought up his hand to block it, and then remembered, and then thought _oh shit_ , only his arm wouldn’t go back down, he couldn’t dodge, and—

His last thought is on the inadvisability of defending yourself from an electrical attack using a bit of metal that’s directly attached to your torso.

And also, _OW_!

But that was a given.

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Emergency Power At 215%_

_Recording Data………_

_Recorded._

_Results Positive._

_Record Made, Title:_

_Electrical Current On Provider—_

_Error—_

_Error—_

_Error—_

_Scanning Provider…_

_Error._

_Running Diagnostics…_

_Troubleshooting…_

_Start Data Storage…_

_Started._

_Estimated Time Remaining:_

_6 Minutes._

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

“Oy, Tea-Boy, what were you—hey! What are you doing with—”

“Ianto! Put him down right now!—”

“I’m activating the emergency sys—”

“Mate, _giddown onna floor_! Giddown Mate!”

“Wot? Wot dey gonna do onna floor? Wot dey—oi! Don’t do dat!” _THUNK_

“Owen!”

“Innit though? Did dat ak-shully hurt ‘tall? An dey gotta get onna floor b’cos dats what we’re s’posed ta say t’em. Innit?”

“Jack, he’s not waking up, Owen’s not—”

“Mate, o’course it is. An I said GIDDOWN OR IMMA SHOOT YA MATE!” *sound of shooting*

“Tosh! Gwen! Get—”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Finished._

_Results…_

_Distressing._

_Provider’s Resistance To Electrical Current:_

_Negligible._

_Minimum Voltage Felt: 5Hz_

_1ma (Alternating Current), 5ma (Direct Current)_

_Burns At 500-1000 Volts_

_Estimated Direct Current Experienced 7.27 Minutes Previous:_

_Calculating…_

_Translating…_

_Approximately 56,000V, Reduced mA._

_Results…_

_Distressing._

_Solution:_

_Redirecting Excess Energy…_

_Adjusting Storage…_

_Estimated Time Until Current Stored:_

_28 Minutes._

_Estimated Time Before Provider Is Functional:_

_25 Minutes._

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

“Wot we gonna do wi’em now? Dey’re onna floor. Dey’re done up wit der cuffs. Wot now Bruv?”

“Mate, we’re…. er… we gonna do da same as all treasure hun’ers do, we will. We’re gonna…”

“Put ‘em in cells, innit? Innit de next step Bruv?”

…

…

“Wot dese controls all do? Wot we s’posed to—”

“Mate! We got de first un open, can’t be hard ta—”

“Hey Bruv, dat one moved! Innit not s’posed ta do dat? Innit s’posed to—”

“Wot!? We gotta get ‘em inna one of ‘em! Git ‘em in de one dats open!”

…

…

“…ugh… what are… hey, wait— fuck. Jack. Jack, you need to wake up. Jack. Owen. Owen, wake—”

“Ouch! Who bloody well kicked me? Gwen? Why are we in the Weevil Cells… oh you have got to be kidding me. We got taken out by a bunch of _chavvy aliens_? Fuck, I—”

“Owen, what are you doing? You need to get Jack up! Maybe his wrist strap—”

“Yeah, yeah, hang on Gwen, _I get that_ , thanks. But _first_ , if you don’t _mind_ , I’m going to stop crushing Tosh. For fuck’s sakes woman…”

“Oh.”

…

…

“Oi Bruv, dey wakin up. Wot we gon do when we got de treasure found? Wot we gon do wiv em?”

“Mate, we gon… we gonna get ta that point when we get der, kay? First, we gotsa find da treasure first. Find it, an’ _that’s_ when we figger out what ter do wiv em.”

“Couldn’t we jes knock ‘em out ‘gain? Knock ‘em out an get ‘em outta de cells and leave? Innit an option though? Hey Bruv? Innit?”

“We gon figger it out _after_ we get de treasure.”

“But innit an option though? Innit Bruv?”

“Jes keep watch over ‘em, make sure dey don’t ‘scape or nothin’. We’re gon check out dis door over ‘ere.”

…

…

“Anything?”

“No, they must’ve damaged it with those guns of theirs… Might take a bit for the electrical current to stop messing with my controls.”

“Keh, who the fuck comes up with something like that?”

“Actually, it’s a fairly brilliant idea, if you consider the weight distribution, and if you can just get the velocity up, find a way to give it just a little more weight…”

“Tosh, it doesn’t take away from the fact that they shot _electric cotton balls at us_. And it _worked_. I repeat. Who the _fuck_ thinks of shit like this?”

“Jack, do you recognize them at all? What kind of alien, where they might have come from?”

“I haven’t seen anything that looks like them before. But the gun… there’s something about them. I just can’t quite put my finger on it…”

**~Dzzzzzt! Dzzzzzt! Dzzzzzt! Dzzzzzt! Dzzzzzt! Dzzzzzt! Dzzzzzt! Dzzzzzt! Dzzzzzt! Dzzzzzt!~** _(cont.’d)_

“What the… oh shit. They’re trying to get into the Archives.”

“What are they trying to get from there?”

“It could be anything, but there are quite a few things in there that… well. We can’t let them get in.”

“Well, we have some time. They set off the second set of emergency lockdown systems when they tried to break down the first one.”

“You managed to start the program then? …Don’t give me that look, I know you’re Good, but we’ve never had to check to see if you’re Aliens Shouting Orders, Swinging Clubs, and Shooting Guns Good. How long do we have?”

“… It depends on how quickly they get the hang of our technology.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… I think there’s a reason that they put us into _one_ cell. _All of us_ , I mean.”

…

…

“Dey’re all woken up, Bruv, ‘cept the one with the shiny on his hand.”

“Wot dey sayin? Dey try to ‘scape yet?”

“Naw, but ‘parently we set off a second alarm or sommat.”

“Mate, I think we’ve figgered dat out already.”

“Well, we didn’t know ‘twas de _second_ alarm, did we? So dat’s news, innit?”

“Jes keep listenin. Lissen for how ta turn it _off_ , whydoncha? Dey ain’t goin nowhere til the shiny mate wakes up.”

“Hard to hear ‘em wiv all dis _noise_ , Bruv…”

…

…

“… Wait a sec…”

“Owen?”

“Tea Boy hasn’t woken up. And in case you haven’t noticed that alarm is blaring pretty fucking loudly. But I can’t… Gwen shift over, I need to check his pulse…”

“…Owen?”

“… I think he’ll be ok. But I think they hit him with a higher charge than they used on us.”

“You _think_?”

“Shove it, Harkness, there’s only so much I can do with my arms tied behind my back… oh get that look off your face. This isn’t even remotely the time for it.”

“But why would they use a higher charge? Do you think they maybe don’t know what charge to use on humans?”

“I don’t know, but we’ve got bigger problems right now. We need to get out before they get into the Archives, and to do that we need to get out of these cuffs. I need to be able to see my wrist strap in order to get the door open… as Owen so eloquently put it, there’s only so much I can do with my hands tied behind my back. Anyone got a lock pick handy?”

“Sorry, it’s not something I generally carry around with… did Ianto just move? Ianto? Are you ok?”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

_Estimated Time Remaining:_

_10 Minutes._

_Results:_

_Insufficient._

_Analyzing Situation…_

_Solution Found._

_Calculating Risk…_

_Not Optimal._

_Solution Search Parameters Adjusted._

_Calculating…_

_…_

_……_

_………_

_Alternative Solutions Found Substandard._

_Employing Primary Solution._

_Redirecting Main Focus._

_Adjusting Survival Parameters._

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

“What is he… oh, _brilliant_ Ianto.”

“What are you…?”

“They probably think we won’t be going anywhere without Ianto awake, so…”

“…So he plays dead, and hopes the cameras don’t pick up that he’s crooking his finger at us?”

“His hands wouldn’t show on the cameras. It’s not the right angle for it.”

“Shouldn’t we be _whispering_ for this…?”

“They’ve still got the alarm going. I can barely hear you, and the mics on the security feed was never meant to be good enough to hear through this… But Ianto, you can unlock…?”

“It’s a good thing they can’t see Tea Boys hands, because there’s not much question as to what a bloody thumbs up means… for fuck’s sakes. Work has turned into a game of fucking charades…”

“Well, if it works… now cover me. They can’t see Ianto’s hands, but they’ll sure as hell see mine. Tosh, in front of me, Owen, Gwen, in front of Ianto. Let’s get started…”

.-~-~-~~-~-~.

He wakes to the feeling of his arms being jostled—to an extent.

His left arm has gone just about entirely to sleep, pins and needles and numbness that he automatically tries to flex his hand through.

He hears someone curse, probably Owen, only he can’t hear too well over the sirens. How had he slept through that?

“…s probably cut off most of his circulation. Shove over, I’ll check him out.”

“If you’d just give me a moment, I’ll get his cuffs—ah.”

The hard line that had been digging into his wrist is gone, and he can relax into a more comfortable position.

What was he doing before this…?

Oh. Right.

Purple men. Aliens. Guns. He got shot.

Twice.

Electrocuted.

Right.

He feels a smile twitch at his lips.

He might be in shock.

(ha)

Fingers that feel too warm are at his wrist, rubbing circulation into them, and he tunes into the voices around him again. Through the alarm.

Gods it was annoying.

He opened his eyes a crack, wincing, and looks up into Tosh’s eyes.

She looks concerned, and he supposed she should be, considering it looked like they were inside a Weevil cage… he blinked.

Were they actually?

“…sakes, took your time on it, didn’t you? Serve you right if you lost an arm…”

The fingers left his hand, and Ianto’s eyes shot wide open, heart rate skyrocketing.

Because he had lost an arm, and he needed to move, he needed to get away, because nonononononononononononoNO this is not, it’s not—

Owen’s muttering abruptly stops, and Ianto squirms enough to be able to look wide-eyed over his shoulder.

But he can’t catch Owen’s eyes, because he’s looking at something else.

“…Owen?”

Ianto turns his head back, abruptly realizing that there’s more than just Owen to worry about, because there’s Tosh, and—

Movement out of the corner of his eye, and fuck, just fuck it all, just fuck his fucking life already—

Of course Jack and Gwen are also in the Weevil Cage Of Ianto’s Doom, because where else would they be?

At the Owen’s stillness, Jack pauses from where he’s fiddling with the controls of his Vortex Manipulator, and looks over at Owen.

“What is it? Is Ianto okay?”

Ianto meets his eyes, sees the concern and knows his own blue eyes are probably showing some mix of shocked, panicked, and resigned…

And then Owen finally speaks.

“Bloody Hell.”

Ianto blinks, because he was expecting something a little more... dramatic? Maybe?

The poleaxed expression is enough, he thinks, but…

And then Gwen leans over Owen’s shoulder to take a look, and her eyebrows rise drastically.

“Jack, I…Did I miss the memo that said Ianto has a metal hand?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GAH.   
> So, writing all dialogue is difficult. But I do want to keep this Ianto!pov-centric.   
> That being said, depending on when this gets posted (writing this, here, right now while struggling through the first “Innit though?”), I’m writing another side story…  
> This time Jack’s pov. Up to and including this chapter. (Woo? Yes? No?)  
> It’ll be up eventually. Probably after the next chapter. (Saying this now, right before posting this…)  
> But look! It happened! What you’ve all been waiting for!  
> And also the mystery about wtf Tosh and Jack have been sharing looks about is revealed!  
> Also, I know nothing, really, about voltage (V) and hertz (Hz) and amperes (mA), but I’m fairly certain it’s more volts=less amperes, but I don’t know what it does to Hertz.   
> So if I got all that jargon wrong… well. I tried. It’s been a while since physics and chemistry class has been a thing. Feel free to correct me. I encourage it.   
> Also, in my mind, the three aliens are Mate, Wot, and Innit. They certainly have actual names, ones their parents/Beings Who Brought Them Into The World gave them, but when I was writing out the dialogue, I separated them into actual characters by having them use their names as much as possible in each sentence, which is how Mate ended up being the ‘leader’, as Wot and Innit are too full of questions and looking for affirmation to do much without following someone else’s lead.   
> Also, I HAD a note here about T3W, but that’s been updated (finally), so all I can say is I am indeed working on the next chapter. Of it AND this story.   
> ~Doodled93~  
> (P.S. Livers may know the secrets of the universe, but you should all know that the secrets to any book may be found…   
> In the appendix.   
> BADUM TCH.)  
> (P.P.S. REPEATING almost INSIDE JOKES TO THE PUBLIC FTW!)  
> Apologies for the rambling notes I leave you guys here. I know you mostly ignore it, but still. -_


	7. The Archives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *peeks head around corner*  
> Um, hi. Been kind of away for a bit now, and not in a ‘hey, I’ve been away from internet!’ sort of way, more like I’ve been working on everything a little bit and so nothing actually got done.   
> Also work. Also people in general not understanding that I am socially inept and anxiety-ridden.   
> Apologies. Enjoy!  
> (more fandom-crossing apologies at the bottom)

Chapter 7—The Archives

 

His chest feels tight, aching, and for once it isn’t from remembering Lisa.

For once.

He can feel a mix of anxiety and panic creeping into his mind, a slow drip to his brain making him feel wired, and oh gods this was not how he thought it would turn out. He doesn’t know what to do, or say, or what he was supposed to…

He’d really just like that frozen look on Jack’s face to go away.

Gwen sounds as lost as he feels. “Really, I just… I know I’m still the newest, but doesn’t… doesn’t a metal hand make it into a memo?” From his peripherals he can see Gwen’s face blank. “Oh, God, did I _actually_ miss the memo? I mean my desk is…”

A part of Ianto that wasn’t in a blind panic softened up and cooed a little bit. Oh, bless her little disorganized heart, she thinks she lost the memo in the mess on her desk… but he was actually having some trouble breathing, here, now, and he had to get that under control.

“Well, fucking hell if you missed it then I bloody well did as well. And I shouldn’t have, as _I’m your bloody Doctor_. What the fuck?” Owen grabbed his shoulder and turned him over so he was on his back, and a quick glance shows that his hand is white-knuckled where it’s holding his shoulder.

He couldn’t feel it.

He turns his eyes back to Jack. He’s hoping that he’s getting across something like _I’m sorry_ and _I swear I didn’t want to keep this from you_ and somehow get across that he _still_ didn’t know how to explain this, but thinks that it’s likely all he’s getting across is _Oops_. It very well might be an _Oops_ sort of a situation, but it’s not actually the time to have that the only thing said.

Owen groped along his shoulder and arm, feeling for a joint, feeling for any give of flesh.

“ _Fucking hell. Your entire fucking_ —well fuck this shit.”

Owen started yanking at his clothing, and Ianto realizes with some horror that he wants him to take off his clothes. He wants to _see_ —

“ _No_ , no, nonono, Owen, you can’t—”

“Bloody, buggering _hell_ I can’t, when the fuck did you—”

Ianto stops paying attention to everything else except Owen’s hands, as his yanking and Ianto’s resisting had turned into a small slap fight cum keep-away game, except it _wasn’t_ a game, he didn’t _want_ —wasn’t _ready to show_ —

~~He wasn’t ever going to be ready, but…~~

He finally gets Owen’s fingers away from where they were one button away from victory against his waistcoat, and transfers his hold on Owen to one hand.

“What the—let go!”

“No. Owen, just, it’s not—it’s not the time Owen!”

“And when exactly was it going to _be_ the time, Ianto?”

Ianto freezes at Jack’s voice, realizing that in the panic of having his arm just revealed, out in the open, he’d wasted time on a slap fight with Owen, and finished it off by neutralizing the threat by holding Owen’s hands in one of his own. And, he looked at where Owen was still struggling against his grip, not seeming to have trouble holding him captive.

He blinked.

He was holding Owen captive.

With his alien technology robot hand.

_Oops._

He looked back to Jack, and tried pushing Owen away in the most non-threatening way he could manage…

_No aggression here, nope, not aggressive at all, not dangerous, not dangerous, I swear…_

“For fuck’s sakes, you’ve got the grip of an anaconda!”

At that Jack’s eyes finally flicked away, to where Ianto was holding his hands out to guard Owen away from his buttons, and Ianto can’t read his expression.

He thinks he can detect some curiosity… maybe.

A quick glance shows that Gwen is staring, rapt, at his hand, and he really wishes his glove hadn’t been taken off, because even in the dingy lighting of the Weevil cages it was shining bright.

Soft fingers touch the back of his neck, and he’s fairly certain he nearly jumps out of his skin.

Tosh looks a bit embarrassed, but mostly curious, mostly focused, and he’s seen that look on her face before… She’s trying to figure something out.

She doesn’t pull her fingers away, instead slides them along under his collar, first one way, then the other, and Ianto doesn’t know what to do with that.

“How do you make it move?” Her eyes narrow. “Is it gears, or…?”

His stomach sinks, and he can’t help but hunch his shoulders, shy from the touch.

He still hasn’t answered Jack.

“So… just to be clear… no one knew about Ianto’s metal hand—arm?”

Ianto swallowed. “No, Gwen… I didn’t tell anyone that I have a s… metal arm.”

He almost says cybernetic, but since apparently no one has jumped to that nightmare yet, he’s hoping to put it off until later…

Until after they’ve got their base back.

He briefly wonders if he can just avoid explaining that it’d been forced on him by Cybermen at all, but Jack’ narrow-eyed stare says that’s not a good idea.

It’d almost be a relief, having his secret out, if he weren’t in a Weevil Cage, alarms still blaring, and… really these are not ideal conditions for a talk like this.

He tries to get everyone back on track.

“Look, Jack, I…” words die in his mouth.

It’s hard to get people back on track when he has to somehow get out so much all at once, and he can’t even speak. He clears his throat and tries again.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to explain it, to bring it up, and I didn’t mean any harm, I just didn’t…”

He clenches his hands, and closes his eyes for a moment. Leather creaks, and the insides of his glove collects sweat, and he thinks it’s probably somehow symbolic, this.

His normal hand covered by leather, his metal hand bared and gleaming in the artificial light.

He finally gets the truth out—or at least part of it—and it happens when he’s locked in a cage.

The Truth Shall Set Ye Free…

Maybe.

His sleeve is jerked, and he looks to find that Owen’s undone his cuffs while he was distracted, and was now yanking his sleeve up as high as it would go.

He can’t help but flinch away from the sight of all that metal, usually covered up and safely hidden away…

Where his sleeve won’t go any higher, Owen glares at him.

“Where is it attached.” He doesn’t say it as a question, and it isn’t why he’s not answering—can’t speak around the knot of stress in his throat—but that doesn’t stop Owen from punching him in the chest.

“ _Ouch_!”

“ _Where_.”

“ _Shoulder_ ,” he can’t stop himself from snapping back, glaring. “I lost my fucking arm at the _shoulder_. _Are you happy now?_ Because we shouldn’t be focusing on this— _this_ , because we’ve got three large and fairly stupid purple aliens one level up, and unless I’m mistaken, that alarm that’s still going off is the one that says someone’s trying to get into the archives.” Owen opens his mouth to speak.

“ _No_ , I will explain it all in excruciating detail afterwards, but we are in a _Weevil cell_.”

He has to stop, swallow, because if he doesn’t he’ll either start screaming or crying ~~or both~~.

He takes a deep breath and turns slightly to make eye contact with Jack.

“If it’s alright with you, I’d like to get the Hub back, and that bloody alarm off, before I explain things.”

Eyes locked, Jack eventually nods, jaw clenched.

.-~-~-~~-~-~-.

Getting out of the Weevil cage… is less hard than it should have been.

The controls for the individual doors are on the outside of the doors, and usually that would be a problem.

To open it Tosh would have to get at the controls, would have to at least be able to get to the wiring, and the doors on the (usually) Weevil side, inside of the cage, is smooth steel plating.

Ordinarily, they’d be stuck for at least another half hour as Jack’s Vortex Manipulator recovered from the surge of electricity… But, since the proverbial cat was well out of the bag…

He felt incredibly conscious of himself as he carefully pressed the fingers of his hand into the metal, just out of the way of where the wiring would be beneath, and started pushing. There were a couple of clicks where contact was made, and it sounded so very _not-human_ he couldn’t hold in a wince.

He’d never done anything like this before—hadn’t wanted to consider it—but if it could withstand Pteranodon claws, and ‘accidentally’ getting slammed in a door (one of his weaker attempts to remove it from his person), whatever material the Cybermen had ended up using was probably stronger than steel.

Or is at least more reinforced than the steel _here_.

With a little more exertion on his part, the metal finally started bending.

He ignored the muttered ‘fuckin hell’ from Owen, and the ominous silence from Jack, and carefully pinched and pulled the metal until a strip came free, and at Tosh’s gesture he made the resulting hole a little wider. Took an extra moment to bend the ragged edges inwards and flat, because though he couldn’t feel it the metal was likely sharp, and he didn’t want Tosh hurt.

She moved in to get at the revealed wired, and Jack grabbed his hand, pulling it towards him to inspect the fingers.

When he looked up from the unscratched metal, the slightest of questions in his eyes, Ianto shrugged. He didn’t know what it was made of, or really anything about how the arm worked, except it did. And that it had it’s own… sort of consciousness. But he wasn’t mentioning that until he’d gotten everything else out.

It was in relative silence that they left the Weevil cage, alarms still blaring around them, and headed up the back way to the main level of the Hub.

Ianto thought he could hear the slight clangs of someone large and heavy clambering down the stairs behind them, from the main stairwell, but he wasn’t going to attract attention to it; if they were going to get the Hub back, they couldn’t go in all guns a’ blazing.

Though Jack might not agree with him, what Torchwood really needed right then was stealth and secrecy.

.-~-~-~~-~-~

Ianto crept his way silently with the rest of Torchwood, doing his best to get his limbs to stop shaking. I was hardly the first time that his metal arm was steadier than he was, but it was distracting this time as the rest of his body was occasionally seizing up with delayed reactions to the electricity.

It really isn’t a good idea to block an electrical attack with a bit of metal directly attached to your torso…

Jack used military hand-signs once they got to the door leading to the Hub; Gwen and Owen to the left, Tosh and Ianto to the right with Jack until they could get a better idea of the situation.

“Whaddya mean dey’re gone, mate? ‘Ow’d dey get out?” one of the aliens asked, loud and outraged.

“Bruv, dey’re jes not anywhere! Wot we gonna do now bruv? Wot we gonna do?”

“Innit not s’posed to go like this bruv? Don’t think dey’re supposed to escape like dat bruv.”

“Shaddup! We gotta get dis door open before dey show up again! Git goin mates!”

Tosh immediately made a beeline for her computer, crouched down low to keep behind the monitor. Ianto did the same, peeking up over the console to try and figure out what, exactly, they were doing to his beloved archives…

And immediately winced.

It looked a lot like they’d tried to bludgeon their way through the door, dents covering the usually smooth surface of the door. He sighs when he realizes how much of a bugger it’ll be getting a proper replacement.

The doors to the Archives give you two chances to input the correct code before shutting down to await the override commands… unless, of course, you tried to bludgeon your way in.

In that case, the two layers of reinforced steel playing and bulletproof glass would slide into the slot left for it directly behind the door, and the inner doorway—the one perpetually left open from the inside—would slide shut to seal the room further.

That required several different override codes, which was difficult enough unless they managed to completely ruin the inner mechanisms, in which case Ianto would likely have to find a way to completely vaporize the whole door.

Jack might…

Well. Jack might not want Ianto anywhere near the Archives after this.

But he wasn’t thinking on that yet.  

They were clustered together, two obviously turning to the third for direction, and… And they weren’t anywhere near Tosh’s computer.

He nudges her, and jerks his chin in the right direction when her eyes settle on him.

When she glances back at him with some confusion, a quick look at Jack showing a horribly neutral expression on his face, “All three of them are close to the archives right now.”

When she doesn’t seem to get it, he frowns. “They’re well within the 15 foot limit for the archives interior shield to block them in, aren’t they?”  
He wasn’t entirely sure—He’d read about the interior shield from the notes of the previous Head Archivists, the tech used for exactly this situation. It would create a barrier approximately 15 feet around the center of the archive’s door, another shield cropping up directly on top of the door to prevent any other attempts to gain entry…

He’d thought it was rather ingenious, though the last time it had to be used was the early 1930’s. Within that 15-foot radius, nothing could get in or out. The second barrier was there to make sure that while inside of the barrier, you couldn’t try to break into the archives without using the correct passcode—and if whoever was trying to break into the archives managed to get that, then the barrier continued for another 15 feet within the archives—it was why, instead of being more efficient and placing more-used reports close to the door for easy access, the first few feet outside of the archives hallway was restricted to false alarms and sign-out sheets for ret-con.

But maybe he’d been wrong in assuming that Tosh would know the right coding to start up the barrier.

He wasn’t. Tosh’s face cleared of confusion, and she nodded. “I can do it, I—”

“They’re going to notice her there.” Jack interrupted.

Ianto nodded, and peeked around the corner. The three stooge-like aliens seemed to be winding down from whatever fight they were having, and he didn’t think they’d all be in the same convenient 15-foot radius for long.

“Jack, can—can you, Gwen, and Owen—”

“—Cover you two getting to the controls? Yes, while you get Tosh to her workstation—”

“—And make sure she isn’t interrupted, yes. Okay.”

They nodded, and for a moment Ianto could forget that he’d had his last secret aired to the whole of Torchwood Three, like Jack hadn’t looked confused and hurt that Ianto had something like having a metal arm from him—didn’t think about the fact that he’d probably look more angry than hurt that Ianto had hid having a _cybernetic arm_ form him. He forgot for a moment, and then Jack’s eyes flickered downwards, a half-millisecond of disconnection to the shine of metal under Ianto’s sleeve, and the weight was back in his gut, weighing down his diaphragm, and his breath hitched.

He looked away, right into Tosh’s sympathetic eyes, and sweet, lovely Tosh very deliberately takes hold of his hand—his metal one. He looks, and sees a small strain in her hand, the slight whitening at her joints, and appreciates the hand-squeeze even though he can’t feel it.

He very, very carefully gives a slight squeeze back, and they wait for Jack’s signal.

“Go.”

Ianto and Tosh run, crouched low to her desk, the sound of gunfire sounding through the persistent alarms of the hub.

A moment to make sure that the Three Stooges are well and truly distracted by the rest of the team, he and Tosh get up from their crouch—

Only to jerk back down, because the Three Stooges don’t seem to be able to aim when they’re panicked; glowing bits of light shoot at every-which direction, hitting anything and everything their panicked flailing might direct their guns at.

He was glad for it because it meant that they weren’t shooting close to Jack, or Owen and Gwen more than half the time, but it was also annoying because it meant that they were also shooting in their direction—intentionally or no, neither Tosh or Ianto could safely get up far enough to see the keyboard. They were just as likely to get hit as Jack and the others.

He met Tosh’s eyes; she understood their problem as well.

She couldn’t input the code to bring up the shield if she couldn’t see the numbers on the keypad—couldn’t do it quickly enough to risk it. As fast as Tosh was at typing, as good at typing without seeing the keyboard as she was, you couldn’t type that quickly, that efficiently, without seeing the keyboard, and especially not quickly enough with your wrists at an angle.

“Could we pull the keyboard over…?”

Tosh shook her head.

“The chord’s too short to risk it—it’s more likely to unplug than be of use…”

Ianto pursed his lips, looked around for any other solution—had a thought.

He popped his head up for a quick glance, put his hand over the number pad and ducked his head back behind the safety of the desk.

“Ianto, what are you—?”

“Can the code be imputed straight form here? Or do you need to get into another part of the... no? Okay, tell me the code and I’ll put it in.”  
“Oh but Ianto, you’re going to cramp…” she trailed off, looking at his arm, and Ianto gave her a tight smile. Yeah, not a problem here.

“Can you do that?”

“Think so.” Gods he hoped this worked. He couldn’t see his hand, didn’t know if this would work at all without being able to see, didn’t know if he had his hands correctly over the number pad…

Tosh only hesitated a moment before she was rattling off long lists of numbers, and Ianto couldn’t feel his hand moving—never could, so that wasn’t a change, but he didn’t know if his hand was moving, couldn’t hear if any typing was happening over the blare of the alarms, and she wasn’t slowing, and he didn’t know what to expect.

She wouldn’t know what to expect, either—this particular system hadn’t needed to be used since either of them joined torchwood—and oh, there’s a thought, what if it _just doesn’t work_? Really, they’d done system updates on just about everything else, but emergency systems like this weren’t tested like they probably should, because people didn’t just make their way into the heart of Torchwood like this.

Obviously someone, or many someone’s had, at some point, for there to BE an emergency system around, and here there were _three_ unknown violent aliens in the Hub, and what was that whining noise?

He was surprised he was even hearing it, the alarm still going strong, but there was a slight whine, a sort of charging sound, and he really, really hoped it wasn’t the Three Stooges pulling something new out to fire at them.

But then Tosh was giving him maybe a dozen more numbers before stopping, and staring at him wide-eyed and breathless.

A sound like an over-large fly swatter making contact rose above the alarm, and there were no more shots fired. Jack was leaning out from behind his bit of wall, reloading his gun with quick fingers, and a quick look behind him showed Gwen and Owen doing the same.

“Well you don’t see that every day,” Owen mused, and Tosh moved to turn off the Archives alarm system. Ianto put in his own override code when prompted, and in the sudden silence of the Hub his ears rang.

Looking at the electric glow of the spherical shield the Three Stooges were beating ineffectually at, all the stress of the day came down on him.

Finding the coffee machine in ruins, trying to fix it with Tosh (and gods, he really needed a coffee, and he wasn’t even sure if it was fixed yet), having to suddenly deal with phantom pains, being electrocuted, being found out in the most unexpected way, and then the ongoing stress of not being sure if he was actually doing something to fix the Three Stooges problem or not—all of it washed over him, his shoulders slumped, and his heart pounded hard at his ribcage.

“Right, that’s dealt with for now,” and Owen was grabbing his arm and steering him away from the others.   
“Wait, what—Owen, what are you—?”

“Owen, let go—what are you doing?”

Owen hardly slows.

“You guys can figure out what the aliens want—if you kill one, I’ll do the autopsy later, but for now I’ve just found out that one member of our motley crew has been hiding a medical condition, so he’s going to get a physical. You’ll all be getting a full check up within the next week, by the way, because like this is going to ever fucking happen again…”

The last thing Ianto saw before he was pulled through the door to the autopsy bay was Jack’s eyes.

He didn’t know what to make of how sad and tired he looked.

.-~-~-~~-~-~-.

He didn’t make eye contact as he undid the buttons of his suit, shrugging out of it and carefully draping it across one of the railings in the med bay.

He kept his eyes fixed on the floor as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, loosened his tie, and started in on the buttons of his dress shirt.

He made note to ask Owen later what sort of cleaner he used down here, because there seemed to be a sort of red mold growing on one of the creases, slightly greenish—unless, of course, it was blood of some sort, but in that case he’d have to make sure that was cleaned up, and—

He could feel Owen’s eyes on him, watching his movements, likely cataloguing where it seemed like he was favoring one movement over another, if anything looked stilted, strained…

He knew that the camera’s in the autopsy bay would record everything, knew that soon enough Jack and Gwen and Tosh would get a chance to gawk at him, that for now they had to deal with the aliens but that wouldn’t hold them forever.

His shirt undone, cuffs unbuttoned, it’s not any harder than usual to shrug out of his dress shirt.

Theer was a sharp inhale, and Ianto busies himself with getting off his last glove—it snagged his sleeve, and once that was off, he removed and folded his clothing, draped his coat over the bottom rungs of the rails overlooking the bay, and sat down.

Owen had seen quite a bit working as the medical expert of Torchwood, so it was rare to get more than a huff out of him when presented with something strange. A swear, not so hard, but a gasp like that?

Was it because of the scarring?

Ianto had a web of scarring around his shoulder, thick ropes of burned tissue extending about a hands length in all directions in a starburst, still pinkish and tender looking after all this time.

He wants to roll his eyes at himself.

Gods _, Ianto, why can’t you get your little amputee self to heal faster, I mean_ really _._

Instead he focuses on the middle distance and slightly to the left, because he knows it’s an ugly sight, and he doesn’t like seeing the peripheral shine of metal at any point of the day.

Maybe that was why Owen was gasping.

Ianto had his shoulder joint left over from the Daleks, something he was thankful for if only because he can still remember how painful it was having the Cybermen attaching the arm to his cauterized stump—he doesn’t want to even try to imagine what it would have felt like if he’d had to endure them replacing the ball joint of his shoulder.

The line between metal and flesh is seamless, no thin strip of metal holding it in place—why would there be, with it wrapped around the jutting end of bone in his arm?

He knew the metal was smooth, seamless; pieces working together like an anatomical drawing with muscle and ligaments working together in one smooth glide.

Owen’s gloved hand touches his shoulder, and he can’t help but jolt.

It was really strange feeling contact, there. 

“I need to see the full range of motion.”

Shoulder up, down, hunched, rolled, continue down to elbow, repeat, twist, turn…

He follows Owen’s instructions mindlessly, listening for any more noise or commentary from Jack, but there’s nothing.

Because he’s not in the room, he knows that logically, but he’s still waiting for a word to come, some judgment to be passed.

He turns his head left again, finding some other point to focus on. He’s not really all that surprised. Tanizaki had found the joints interesting, the arm a fascination, but he’d thought the same of Lisa. He’d been fascinated by her pain, her consciousness, had more than professional interest in the entire horror of it, and he didn’t know why he was surprised at Jack’s possible/probable horror at his…

Well.

His arm?

Was he at the point where he could call it _his arm_ yet? Was he that damaged yet? Had he always been?

“Show me approximately where you end and the metal begins, thanks.”

He draws a line with his finger a couple of inches below the line where scarred tissue meets metal, the flesh stiff and unyielding by whatever else keeps the arm attached, and then draws another line roughly two inches lower.

At Owen’s questioning look, Ianto shrugged.

“Flesh,” he retraces the first line, “and bone,” he repeats the second.

Owen pales a little, and scowls.

He feels like he should probably be happy that for the remainder of the checkup Owen still feels comfortable enough with him to snipe and gripe at him for not coming to him immediately, for being bloody stupid enough to think that a little first aid training would be enough to deal with bloody amputation—he interjects only once, to say that it wasn’t actually all that bloody; it had been cauterized almost immediately—but settles for being thankful that this only means that he wouldn’t have to deal with any nasty comments about Lisa.

“I’m not going to ask how this happened just yet. I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming you don’t want to hash it out repeatedly, and Jack’s going to want to hear this.”

That is both a relief and a worry, because he doesn’t think he could get through it right then, didn’t think he could get the story out, but Owen hadn’t said he wouldn’t ask at all. Just that the story would have to wait for Jack.

And that was… not really the better option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to those waiting on T3W, that should hopefully be done soon-ish, apologies to those who were promised It’s Green getting updated and having that entirely not happen (not sure when it WILL, sorry, sorry, sorry, but it’s not abandoned, I swear), apologies to those who probably noticed that I posted a whole new story and were like “Really? We’re waiting on so much and you’re POSTING A NEW STORY? In a WHOLE NEW FANDOM. Wtf Doodle.”  
> Hmm, sorry to my brain twin (you know who you are) for being a bit very absent from conversation (and yes I know it was a combination of school and work form both ends, but *shrugs*), and I can’t think of too many relevant apologies to make beyond this.   
> Hope you enjoyed, and LOOK! It’s pretty much all revealed! More on the alien trio next chapter.  
>  I wonder if anyone actually knew where I was going with this whole story, and if they think they know now… This ‘verse might just end with Jack running off with the Doctor, with you leaving the rest to your imagination, but I’ve got a few ideas for S2, so I suppose we’ll just have to see.   
> Thank you for your patience, and thank you all for your support, you’re all so lovely I don’t know what to do being smothered by all this amazing from all sides—  
> Just know it’s appreciated.   
> Also thank you for your patience with me using ‘—‘s as much as I do.  
> *hugs you whether you want it or not*


	8. Naked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta DA! I’m not dead!  
> Purple-alien plot is finished here.   
> Enjoy!

 

Owen wasn’t lying when he said that there would be physicals—Ianto’s following hour is taken up with his own.

He has his blood taken; Owen measures his height and weight (frowns, at that), and also the lengths of his arms (turns out they’re symmetrical). He checks his temperature, his reactions, his eyesight—everything. When he goes to measure his waist, hips, and shoulders, Ianto sighs and tells him he already knows the numbers—can’t look this good in a suit without having it tailored, can’t really have it tailored by anyone else now that he can’t be sleeveless in public—but Owen measures him anyway.

He worries between Owen’s grumbling that Jack will be done with the burly purple aliens at any moment, but it doesn’t happen, even when Owen pulls out a scanner and has him stand with his arms out. Turns out he needed his measurements for the device.

“This means we can skip you having to turn your head and cough, Tea Boy… god knows I’ll leave _that_ for bloody Harkness.”

He wants to make a joke at that and opens his mouth to do so, but Owen cuts him off just as he realizes that it’s very likely that any budding relationship between them was… well.

The scanner apparently does what it needs to, as Owen is absorbed in the next few minutes with the stream of data that comes from it.

“Well,” he drawls, glancing up at Ianto, “you’ve somehow dodged infection, and aside from mild dehydration and needing to eat more protein—honestly, you’ve impossibly managed to get all skin and bones and _muscle_ , git—you’re in the peak of health, save one arm. I’ll have to measure the weight of _that_ ,” he points, “on it’s own to get a better read of your weight. Now, since I already promised that the whole undoubtedly gory story would wait for Jack, the only big question I can ask is… can you actually take that thing off.”

He didn’t actually phrase it as a question, but Ianto shook his head all the same.

There was a pause, Owen wrote something down in Ianto’s file, then,

“I figured, since it was around bone, just— well. How often do you clean your shoulder?”

Ianto shrugged reflexively, ignored the way Owen stares at the motion. “Every time I shower. Regular body wash—vitamin E cream for the scarring afterwards.” That was something he’d learned from Lisa before—well. Before.

“You don’t do anything particular to clean the metal?”

He couldn’t help his nose scrunching slightly, and shook his head to cover it.

Owen hummed under his breath.

“Well, the vitamin E is a good idea—you should find yourself a tea-tree oil ointment to pair it with—good for more than just acne, and you’ve so far avoided an infection but it should help with that, too. Webbers’ makes a good mix of the two, very easy on the skin—”

Ianto gave him a look, which Owen returned.

“I like my face to be smooth as a babies bottom, thanks very much. Personal grooming habits aside, everything else I need to know will have to wait until Jack—and likely the rest of our sorry crew—are present, so we should probably go see what’s keeping them. C’mon then, clothes on… Jack may appreciate the view, but you look about as comfortable in your pants as I do having to see you with only them on.”

.-~-~-~~-~-~-.

If you thought three giant purple aliens couldn’t look like sulking children, you’d be mistaken. One had even sat on the ground, back facing them.

Gwen was just beside the edge of the force field talking in that low tone she got when she was playing Good Cop to Jack’s Bad. That voice made her sound even more Welsh, somehow, and Ianto always wondered if that was what got people to respond to it so well.

Wondered if he should lay on his accent a bit thicker for the Big Explanation, if that would lessen the betrayal.

“They say anything?” Owen was asking, and Tosh shook her head. “So far nothing, just this…”

“Pouting?” Ianto offered up before he could think better of it.

Tosh laughed a little and nodded.

“Exactly. I don’t know if it’s their culture, or what else it could be.”

Ianto raised an eyebrow.

“As much as I hate to bring up the possibility, could it be possible that they’re children…?”

“They certainly look grown to me,” Jack grinned, while at the same time one of the aliens looked up with an “Oi!”

Ianto would be relieved at the flirtatious tone, if not for the heavy look in his eyes.

“I dunno Jack,” Owen drawled out. When Ianto glanced at him, he cocked his head at the three aliens. “These blokes don’t look the least bit mature to me, I mean, look at them.”

Owen’s words seemed to get the aliens more agitated, and Ianto nodded, getting the idea.

“They’re kids, really.”

“Oi! Stop callin’ us dat!”

Ianto pasted a look of surprise on his face, and nodded as patronizingly as he could manage. “Oh, I’m sure your parents would say you’re very grown up.”

That was the right thing to say.

As one, all three aliens looked up to the ceiling, shoulders hunched.

“Bruv,” one whispered, “wot we gonna do if’n—”

The apparent leader shushed the other, face turning a deeper purple in either anger or embarrassment, Ianto didn’t know.

Movement to the side caught his attention, and Tosh caught and held his eyes, flickered a glance to Owen as well, and raised her eyebrows. Ianto frowned, what…

“Oh, too right,” Owen agrees, but to what Ianto didn’t quite know. “I’m sure they’ll have a lot to say when they show up.”

The three aliens froze. Ianto caught on.

Perhaps the good/bad cop routine wouldn’t be needed.

“W-wot? How’re dey—”

“Well of course they’ll be able to find you,” Ianto say over their sputtering, “I mean, you can’t imagine they wouldn’t be able to track you by—well, _you_ know.” Ianto smiles, shrugs like it’s obvious, and three purple faces turn upwards.

“Bruv, the ship! The Ship! Dey—”

“Shut UP!”

“But the signal—”

This time the apparent leader clamped one massive hand over the others mouth.

Jack laughed, grinning as he started doing something to his wrist strap. Quite possibly getting whatever ‘signal’ the three stooges’ ship was giving off.

“You know I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get to play hard ball with these guys, but this works too. Tosh, I’m linking up the mainframe to the signal, can you—”

Tosh’s fingers were a blur over the keys, before, “Got it.”

.-~-~-~~-~-~-.

Tosh’s computer monitor flickers, grey static rolling down it in lines, and Ianto would be worried about it if Tosh hadn’t been mumbling about sending transmissions so far out of their galaxy.

It had taken her roughly half an hour with the help of Jack’s wrist-strap to find the origin code—sort of like a homing beacon for spaceships, Jack had explained—and then forty minutes on top of that to get a message and return-address through.

The face—faces? Maybe?—that slowly developed on the screen were exceptionally bug-like, black exoskeletons—or armor, maybe?—decorated with swirls and crisp lines in a variety of colours.

If it was armor, it was rather pretty.

Bug-like, and pretty.

The faces peered through whatever sort of display they were using, before gasping and turning away, arms coming up to cover their faces.

Jack started laughing.

“Oh my—Cover yourselves!” said the one on the left. It—she?—sounded rather like Ianto’s Maidenly Aunt who’d get exceptionally shrill when Rhiannon wore trousers.

Jack was still laughing, head thrown back, and the bug-people peeked through their arms before making rather grossed out noises for bug-people.

“They, haha, ha, they’re Zur—oh my god this explains so much—they’re Z’drcsillag!”

Zurich-lag? Zuri-sa-lag? It was a vaguely Hungarian-Polish sounding mess of a name, but the two figures on the screen made pleased noises.

“Yes, indeed, a pleasure to make your acquaintance, I’m sure—only would you please get some coverings? You are all rather distressingly naked…”

Ianto shared a glance with Tosh, confused when Jack laughed again.

“Hah! Yeah, bet we are to _you_. I haven’t been to a Z’drcsillag party in ages! But I’lltell you now this is nothing compared to your offspring!”

The arms came down and two sets of glittering blue eyes glared at Jack before, seemingly remembering themselves, they averted their eyes.

“What do you mean? Speak plainly, now.”  
“Well that’s what we’re calling you about.”

From through the barrier, one of the three purple aliens—who looked remarkably different from their…parents, shouted “DON’T TELL ‘EM!”

The ring leader cussed and said, equally loud, “SHUT UP ALREADY!”

The Z’drcsillag on the screen gasped, and let out a number of clicks and whistles that managed to sound questioning.

“Aw Mate…”

“Bruv I didn’ mean to…”

“Release our children at once!”

“I’d love to, especially as they broke into our compound and tried to get into our Vault, I’d love to get them off our hands… Though if you’re going to try and make this out to be a kidnapping—which, by the way, would be an amazing feat, as this is the first time I think _anyone’s_ ever seen a less than mature Z’drcsillag, you hide them so well—then I suppose I should be getting in contact with the, ah, proper authorities, don’t you think? Maybe the Judoon?”

The Z’drcsillag gasped, entirely forgoing the raised arms to shudder in their shells—exoskeletons. “You _wouldn’t_. My darlings in the hands of those brutes!? And they’re—oooh _no_ , they’re _naked_ , aren’t they. My darlings, naked in a strange place, in public, oh…”

The Z’drcsillag on the right collapsed sideways, its partner briefly disappearing from the screen, presumably to help.

Fainting aliens.

Honestly, Ianto didn’t know what he’d do with a normal job at this point.

.-~-~-~~-~-~-.

It took until the elder Z’drcsillag’s got within transport-distance for he and Tosh to get the barrier down, Owen and Jack training their guns on their rather downtrodden forms.

Ianto did get to see a Z’drcsillag, as the three Stooges… maybe mother, but he was entirely unsure as they all seemed to have the same sort of voice, but he did get the chance to see one, and this time not through a static-filled screen.

The Z’drcsillag that came through was nearly 8 feet tall, and solidly oval. Its black external-shell/exoskeleton had gold, silver, and bronze etchings, floral and geometric shapes flowing together attractively.

If the Z’drcsillag, however you pronounced that, did make the transition from soft-fleshed purple chavs into intricately covered, um, rather Victorian creatures, then all the power to them.

The older Z’drcsillag had flailed its arms about when it caught sight of the three Stooges—

“ _Heavens_! You’re naked!”

—and had quickly slapped on some sort of clip on each of them. It didn’t stop its twitching until they’d disappeared, teleported elsewhere in a very Star Trek manner, and then it turned towards the group looking as sheepish as an 8-foot upright beetle-being could look.

“I am simply—oh, I am terribly, terribly embarrassed and—oh you’re all… naked. Well. I apologize, but I, ahem, am going to have to apologize facing… this way.” And it turned about-face.

As odd as Ianto thought of their definition of ‘naked’, he didn’t mind the change in view. The dome of their back-piece was like one large metallic mandala, and it looked a bit like where there wasn’t metal there were even more etchings in the black carapace itself.

“Yes, well, I am truly, truly apologetic, I am sorry that you had to go through this, that they would do something so embarrassing. Oh, it’s just dreadful. If there is anything, anything I could do to make it up to you—and thank you so much by the way for leaving those _Judoon_ out of the picture, yes,--but if there’s anything I could do, please let me know.”

“Just make sure they don’t show up here ever again, alright?” Jack grinned.

It was a nice grin, Ianto noticed, very attractive for all it did to a turned back.

“Yes. Well. Your entire planet seems rather distressingly naked, so I do not believe _that_ shall be a problem. Oh! And before I leave, I really must commend you,” it gestured behind it, still not turning, but the gesture was still distressingly in Ianto’s direction. “The detail work on your limb is _beautiful_ , so shiny. Excellent craftsmanship. Anyway I mustn’t be rude and gust, so I must take my leave.”

And the Z’drcsillag teleported out of the Hub.

Attention turns from where the 8-foot bug person was to Ianto.

He tries for a smile. Doesn’t think he quite manages it.

“So. Am I the only one dying for a cuppa?”

.-~-~-~~-~-~-.

Explaining Canary Warf to his team wasn’t any easier than explaining what he could to Tanizaki—harder, actually, because if he wasn’t getting interrupted by Owen with questions about the original injury, what he remembered about the surgery aspect of it, he was getting interrupted by Tosh asking about the tech they used, and if he remembered what anything looked like inside the arm, and when that wasn’t happening he was getting interrupted by Gwen’s sympathetic noises.

And when he wasn’t interrupted by them, he interrupted himself when he looked too long at the closed off expression that took over Jack’s face at the first mention of _Daleks_ , at the colour that drained from his face when Ianto first stuttered out _Cybermen_.

“For my first encounter with a live alien species, I think I did all right, considering… And, ah, I’m not sure if Cybermen are considered aliens, because of the, you know, but, ah, I think I’ve done all right. Considering.”

 _Considering Lisa, Lisa, LisaLisaLisa_ was running through his brain, but he bit his lip because he’d already, haltingly, said all he was going to say on that matter, but it still hurt, and there was still a bubbling ball of anxiety that he’d be dealt with the same way.

That at some point, he’d _need_ to be dealt with, in some way.

But then, a couple bullets through your vitals was better than somehow launching a Cyberman Army, wasn’t it?

“Oh Ianto…”

“Goddamnit Tea Boy…”

Gwen didn’t say anything but pulled him into a slightly awkward hug—they weren’t all that close, even now. Tosh made it a little less awkward by joining, and Owen scowled and ran rough fingers through his hair.

Jack was terribly, horribly silent, and Ianto was afraid of what his expression might be.

He didn’t look.

After a moment:

“…We need to make sure there isn’t any programming. Let Tosh look you over—Owen, you already had your turn—and we can get started.”

.-~-~-~~-~-~-.

It is extremely, extremely uncomfortable being shirtless after consciously being _covered_ for so long, even more so because of the audience.

Ianto isn’t body-shy, stays fit through at-home exercises—he isn’t even ashamed of his scars, because everyone’s got them.

Okay, maybe not the ugly twist he’s got spreading from his shoulder, but hey, scars are scars.

But he’s got a rather large, hmm, shiny problem with his body, and he’s said it before, he could see the appeal of sleek lines and smooth metal—but he’d _actually_ see the appeal if it were on someone else’s body. Not his own.

Tosh again checks around his neck, along the line of his shoulder, and after a questioning glance, presses around the pink-edge of his scar.

It’s sore, but not the shooting pain it was, not even the deep-ache it sometimes still was—

She uses various bits and bobs to test the arm, and a whole line of alien and human tech is used against its mystery-metal, trying to find a way inside.

Thankfully, the arm doesn’t fight back.

After a while, something from Owen’s mutterings catches Ianto’s attention.

“What was that?”

He looked uncomfortable for a moment.

“… Wouldn’t be safe or sanitary to pull the arm off, not with it attached to bone. I’ll have to figure out a way to x-ray it, but seems like the only way it’ll come off is…” He mimes a chopping motion. Ianto sighs.

“Won’t work.”

Jack frowned.

“Ianto…”

Ianto raised an eyebrow and gave Jack a flat look.

“The arm,” he waggles it, “is resistant to harm. It is also resistant to me being harmed, which I suppose is good, but it is also resistant to being… parted from me.”

Jack continued to frown. Ianto sighed again and stared at the high ceiling of the Hub. A flash of movement, Myfanwy shifting in the makeshift nest he’d helped her put together.

“I tried removing the arm. With a saw. To my shoulder. Obviously it didn’t work.”

Owen whapped him in the back of his head. “Bloody fucking idiot!”

“Hey, it didn’t _work_!”

“No fucking excuse! Don’t fucking try it again!”

Tosh shook her head.

“Jack, I can’t find any way in, and none of my tools are even making a scratch.”

Jack tried what appeared to be a variety of mysterious things with his wrist-strap next, but whatever data he got from it seemed lacking based on his expression.

After a moment, Jack caught Ianto’s eye, and jerked his chin towards his office.

“C’mon, one more thing to check for today.”

Ianto took heart in the somewhat soft look Jack directed his way before the five of them headed to his office.

.-~-~-~~-~-~-.

 “Well, we know the cells won’t hold you, so…” Jack says, gesturing Ianto towards the chair.

Ianto wonders where he pulled it out from, as he’d certainly have noticed a chair with that many straps on it before. There were two where his arms were obviously meant to go, one for his upper arm and one on his forearm, and two each for his legs.

Or—no, that was just three, he supposed, as one strap was to go over both his thighs, and two were there to keep his shins in place.

There was another strap that would go over his stomach, with a wide padded part to keep it comfortable…

That seemed odd, somehow.

There was no headrest for the chair, which Ianto thought he should be thankful for.

No straps to hold his head in place.

That was just as well, he supposed.

“I’d stay there if you asked me to,” he feels the need to point out.

It’s not like he’d have anywhere to go—Ianto may know the Hub exceptionally well, but he had nothing on Jack. He could see now that it had only been through exceptional luck that Jack hadn’t gone wandering about the Hub at night when Lisa was still—well.

He was just lucky.

But he was the one who’d have to order the materials for the new Weevil door (so long as he got through this), and it’d be annoying to order so much more.

Jack says nothing to that, so Ianto sits in the chair.

.-~-~-~~-~-~-.

The straps on his arms are done quickly, efficiently, and Jack only asks for his left arm to check the tightness.

His heart starts to beat a little quicker when the strap around his middle is done up, but he chalks that up to the stress of the situation in general.

First one, and then the other shin strap is done up, Jack feeling around it to check the tightness this time, and he’s feeling a little light headed, because this seems a little bit… off, a little bit… familiar? Wrong. Just…

The last strap goes across his thighs, and he can’t help but give a little wriggle to test the tightness, and he can’t

Really

Move

He just

“Now then, Ianto we just need you to—Ianto? Ianto. Ianto?”

There was a roaring in his ears, and he’d like to get away from it except he can’t move, he was pinned down except for the trembling in his limbs he could feel, except where he couldn’t feel it, and really he just couldn’t move couldn’t move couldn’t move couldn’t

There was a snapping noise, and the collar of his shirt dragged lightly at his neck as there was movement, except Ianto couldn’t move couldn’tmovecouldn’tmovecouldn’t

His hand hurt from where he was gripping the armrest—the arm—he—he didn’t—couldn’t breath very well, there was something over his chest, until another snapping sound and he could breath easier, another snap and he could move his other arm, and there was a hand on his shoulder—hand **s** on his shoulders—they weren’t metal, thank God they weren’t metal hands—he just couldn’t feel it, and one moved to the back of his neck. Pushed his head down—

Before his head was between his knees, there was another snap, and the strap across his thighs gave way.

From between his knees he saw his cybernetic hand reach down and slip metal fingers beneath one strap; put pressure he couldn’t feel beyond a forming bruise on his leg (that he was now also feeling on his arms, what did—) and then another snap as the leather gave from the pressure.

Another snap, another leg freed, and then his arm seemed perfectly happy to match his hand in clutching at his ankles.

The hand—Jack’s hand—was still on the back of his neck, and Ianto suddenly became aware of how heavily he was breathing, how it stuttered in his throat, and slowly, like someone was turning the volume back up on real life, he could hear Owen cussing up a storm over Tosh frantic murmurs.

He pushed back a little; just the slightest of pressures, and Jack’s hand retreated. He didn’t know what to do with the small parting squeeze, so he put it to the back of his mind to review at a later date.

For now he had to get the mirroring sensations of the Cybermen strapping him down and Jack strapping him down out of his head, had to not focus on it, because he didn’t—he couldn’t—

Another gasping breath, and Ianto slowly returned himself upright.

Something odd out of the corner of his eye had him looking to the right and—the armrest was attached to his arm. The snapping noise from much earlier was the _entire right armrest_ being snapped off from the chair.

“S—” Ianto had to cough, work enough saliva in his mouth to swallow, and then tried again.

“Sorry about that. Sir.”

Jack’s hand was still there, warm against the back of his neck. Ianto shivered.

He stared down at the extra weight on his arm because it was a surer thing than what Ianto might see looking into Jack’s eyes.

And then Owen’s hands were tugging him up and pulling at the straps keeping the armrest attached.

“Fuckin’ hell, I should’ve figured that you wouldn’t have gone to _talk_ to someone about Canary Warf—I mean, you didn’t talk to anyone about _losing your bloody arm_ , so why am I surprised at this twist. C’mon, up you go.”

“Owen, we still need to figure out how to get that thing off of Ianto—”

The look Owen gave Jack was scathing. “Well we can fuck that for now, Harkness. So far as we’ve seen, Tea Boy’s hardware has done nothing but keep him from damage—though really, the intelligence of the thing is debatable since it accidentally—”

“— _probably_ accidentally—”

“—sent an electrical charge directly to his torso, but then, it’s a robot arm. Doesn’t exactly have space to be the _brains_ of the operation.”

“ _’You shouldn’t trust something if you can’t see where it keeps its brain_ ,’” Ianto felt the need to mention, because when in doubt quoting Molly or Arthur Weasley at least dissipated some tension, and got a cuff to the back of the head in answer. Ianto caught Tosh and Gwen’s smiles, but Owen still had him manhandled facing away from Jack.

“Seems like it’s taking answers from _your_ brain, though, and so far as I know you still like all of us living and functional, so the likelihood of you deciding to suddenly off us is about the same as it was yesterday and the day before that, so I’m going to vote postponing removal of your unique prosthetic until well after the shock has worn off.”

“Seconded,” Tosh raised her hand, smiling.

“Since when was this a democracy?” Ianto tensed, but he could hear the smile in Jack’s voice. “Fine, we can hold off until after everyone’s recovered from our little adventure today, but Ianto…”

Ianto craned his neck around to give Jack a weak smile.

“…Should I prepare one of the holding cells for the night?” Ianto wouldn’t be surprised. He wouldn’t argue, as everything was turning out better than he’d feared, so—

“No need. You can stay in the bunker with me.” He suddenly grinned, and Ianto didn’t want to get his hopes up, “You know there’s plenty of room for the two of us.”

Ianto let Owen lead him back to the autopsy bay, his heartbeat drowning out Owen’s mutterings about new bruises and lesions, and hoped it wasn’t his imagination that Jack’s eyes were a burning weight between his shoulder blades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, rather lengthy, but the aliens thing wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it to, and I’m still a bit dissatisfied with the last few paragraphs, but…   
> Hope you enjoyed, I’m planning on moving back to Episode-related chapters next, but, yes, with added drama over Ianto and his shiny cyber arm…  
> I posted this on ffn last night, and would have had this up earlier except every time I trie pasting the text it was one huge wall of it, no formatting. So,sorry about that.  
> Thanks for all the support!


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